Parkers Back :: Religion, Divine Intervention

â€Å"Parker’s Back† is filled with biblical allusions as one man’s journey towards God and pleasing his wife ends unsuccessfully. Parker has always been a rebel; however, his wife is a devout, plain woman who has an indescribable control on him, possibly due to his subconscious wish to be saved. Parker wishes to leave her, but finds he never can do so. Not only is he unable to please his wife, but also he is unable to experience spiritual satisfaction, and in the brief moment at the end where he does have a connection to God, his wife rids him of it. Biblical allusions are spread throughout â€Å"Parker’s Back,† and they serve to emphasize O.E. Parker’s failure as a spiritual person. Parker notices a tattooed man at fair, where he became inspired to get tattoos. The man’s tattoos are of â€Å"beasts and flowers,† (384) full of â€Å"intricate design of brilliant color† (384), as they represent an Eden that Parker cannot have. Parker’s response to the man’s tattoos can never be replicated; Parker always feels dissatisfaction with his own tattoos. The man’s tattoos seemed to be alive and have â€Å"a subtle motion† (384), and Parker is never able to experience the emotion he felt when looking at the man’s tattoos, as if he can never experience Eden again. On the other hand, Parker’s tattoos seem to represent something entirely different. The serpent on Parker’s arm represents the wrongs he has done, and with the serpent on his arm, Parker cannot truly experience the religious and spiritual satisfaction that his wife does. This biblical allusion of Eden and the serpent shows that Parker has strugg led to find peace, and has had a troubled life. As a tattoo-clad high school dropout, a dishonorably discharged ex-navy, and a heavy drinker, O.E. Parker is a failure. His soul is a â€Å"spider web of facts and lies,† (393) and compared to his devout wife, he is a failure in religion because of his lack of faith. Parker detests his own wife, calling her â€Å"plain,† (382) but he still stays with his wife, an action that caused him to be â€Å"puzzled and ashamed of himself† (382). Perhaps the real reason he is staying with his wife is that she â€Å"had married him because she meant to save him,† (382) and Parker is waiting to be saved. Sarah knows that O.E. Parker’s real name, Obadiah Elihue, is significant when she says it out loud in â€Å"a reverent voice† (387).

History of Atlanta Essay

Even by the standard of America, Atlanta is a young city. Even before it became a settlement, such cities like Cincinnati, Charleston, Chattanooga and New Orleans were already thriving cities. Atlanta can be said to be a bright, aggressive and brash town with the rough ages smoothed by time. The city dashes with the charm of the south. Atlanta has a unique and proud heritage despite its relatively young age and has a past that is worth being preserved. Even though Atlanta was in the South, it was not however of the south from the beginning. It begun as a small railway crossing. As such, it was established as a railway terminus. The culture, values and mores of the town resembled those of the frontier towns of the Old West than of the cities of the Old South. The catalyst for its growth and economy still remains transportation. The city always attracted men and women who possessed vision from the beginning, the opportunists who possessed the foresight to offer the facilities that would make Atlanta become one of the most important cities in the Southeast. The Creek and Cherokee Indians owned the land that is now Atlanta some one hundred and fifty years ago (Robert, 1981). When the first white settlement was founded on the banks of the Chattahoochee River near the Indian village of Standing Peachtree, the United States was well into war. This was in the year eighteen twelve. The white people and the Indians lived together until the year eighteen thirty five when the leaders of Cherokee nation consented under the Treaty of New Echota to leave their lands and move west. During this period, the Cherokee lands were officially under the possession of Georgia, an act that resulted into the infamous Trail of Tears. Farmers and craftsmen from the mountains of North Georgia, Carolinas and Virginia were the early settlers in the area of Atlanta. These early settlers were in most part hardworking and deeply religious. Through lottery disbursements, they came to possess their lands. They lived in harmony and peace with their Indian neighbors. They also owned a few slaves. They built schools and churches. They often traveled to Decatur to trade besides marketing their cotton in Macon which was a hundred miles to the south. In the antebellum south, this society was as close to being termed yeoman as possible. In the metropolitan Atlanta area, some of their pre-Civil War churches, homes, mills and cemeteries are still in existence. The inception of Atlanta was the integration of necessity and geography made possible by the steam engine. The construction of a trade route from the coast of Georgia to the Midwest was voted by the Georgia General Assembly in the year eighteen-thirty six. It was meant to be a state railroad which was to facilitate trade between the state and other regions. The terminal for the railroad was to be at the sparsely populated Georgia Piedmont. It was to run from a particular point on the Tennessee line close to the Tennessee River, starting near Rossville to a point on the Southeastern bank of the Chattahoochee River that could be easily accessed by the branch railroads (Reed, 2006). The name of the railroad was to be the Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia. Stephen Harriman Long, an army engineer with a wealth of experience, was offered the task of finding the most practical route foe the new rail line. He chose a site that was eight miles south of the river. The Indian trails and connecting ridges converged at this point. This point that he chose proved to be just the right site with an ideal climate. The stake was driven near the present Five Points in Downtown Atlanta. Atlanta is positioned in the Piedmont Plateau with an elevation of one thousand ands fifty feet yet no natural barriers can impede on the growth of the city. Atlanta grew developed like the towns in the West between the periods that long drove his stake on the ground and the beginning of the civil war. Gold was stroke in the rail lines instead of mining. Opportunists, salesmen, merchants, craftsmen and land speculators were soon attracted by the railroad workers’ little settlement which was aptly named Terminus. What followed were the warehouses, ironworks, textile industry, sawmills and banks. The city later came to be called Marthasville in honor of the Governors daughter. However, prominent citizens considered this mane to be too long and bucolic for the progressive city and hence were changed to Atlanta. The patterns of settlement were slowly being formed. A substantial merchant residential community known as Mechanicsville thrived around the rail yards. Near the White Hall Tavern grew the West End. Luxurious home begun to be built on Marietta, Whitehall, Broad, lower Peachtree and Washington Street as residential avenues of important citizens begun to be established. However, pre-War Atlanta was not a quiet business community. According to Franklin Garrett, the town was classified as tough even as the number of good, moral citizens increased. The city distinctively developed as a railroad center with vices that were characteristic to rough frontier settlements. Gambling dives, brothels, resorts and drinking were normal in the city and the sporting elements were insulting on their defiance of the public order (Robert, 1981). When the Civil War erupted, Atlanta was already an important city. It had a population of more than ten thousand individuals, banks, manufacturing and retail shops, four rail lines, banks, carriage and wheelwright shops, three thousand eight-hundred homes, tanneries, warehouses, mills and iron foundries. It became an important shipping and supply center for the Confederacy. It also possessed the facilities which made it necessary for the Union forces, led by Sherman, to seize and destroy it. In July 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman began his campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The city surrendered to his forces on September 2 after a series of battles and a siege of the city lasting for a month. The city was on fire not because of Union shells but mainly due to the box of explosives that the retreating Confederates blew up. Evacuation of the city and the destruction of buildings that could be used by the confederates were ordered by Sherman. By the time Sherman started his march to the sea, the only structures left standing in Atlanta were about four hundred buildings. The city became a ghost town of ashes and rubble. When the residents came back and begun rebuilding the town, the city was still smoldering. The residents came back with a new and stronger spirit than before. Their confidence in the future of Atlanta grew and within five years after the holocaust, the city was rebuilt and its prewar population redoubled. The city adopted a new form of architecture which waxes popular during that era since the original antebellum architecture was almost entirely destroyed during the period of the war. However, some of the few fine whitewashed columned mansions that were in downtown Atlanta survived even though others were later destroyed to provide room for state and city buildings. The limits of the city were originally circular and extended one mile from the zero milepost. Its initial expansions were circular too. The demographic patterns of the city were reestablished as before the war. West End continued to thrive as a residential business community of the upper class. Along the Peachtree and Washington Streets, wealthy white citizens established and built Victorian mansions. Prosperous black enclaves also developed despite the fact that segregation existed in the city. These enclaves were concentrated along Auburn Avenue after 1906. Summerhill, Vine City and many other residential pockets around the central city emerged as black neighborhoods. The city experienced rapid growth from the time that the Civil War ended through the last decade of the nineteenth century. The central business district expanded from Union Depot toward the it’s limits by the end of eighteen seventy (Best of Images of America, 2000). The city was dissected by a path of railroad tracks which converged in the lower downtown gulch. The flow of traffic over the tracks was facilitated by the construction of a network of viaducts that were planned in the turn of the twentieth century and completed twenty five years later. The business district was moved to another level by the viaducts which led to the establishment of another area that is presently known as Underground Atlanta. For the railroad depots, a simple utilitarian Italianate architecture was encouraged and this influenced so much the design of the design of the commercial buildings that were constructed before the turn of the century. The foundation of Atlanta’s economy within this period still became the railroads. This continued through to the Second World War when emphasis shifted to truck and air transport. The city’s growth was spurred by transportation and private enterprise. In the final decade of nineteenth century, new rail lines were added to the city’s network. Its dominance as southeast’s railroad center became established with the consolidation of ten radiating lines within that decade which included divisions of Southern Railway totaling five. With the recession and depression of the economy of the nation in the nineteen eighties, a series of fairs and expositions were staged by an Atlanta promoter to attract business in this area. In an attempt to establish a new economic base in the postwar south, the International Cotton Exposition was staged in 1881. Atlanta was advertised as a commercial and transportation center by the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 which made Atlanta to emerge as one of the major cities of the Southeast. The Exposition became recognized worldwide and by 1903, many regional and national companies had their headquarters in Atlanta. The growth of Atlanta as an industrial base, contrasting it with the rest of the south which was inclined toward agriculture, came as a result of the fair and exposition. Industrial complexes were established along the rail lines, textile mills also came south and mill villages were also constructed to house the workers. The residential perimeters also expanded with the introduction of horse drawn street car in the 1871. There was also the emergence of several private developers. Among the notable private developers was Joel Hurt who built the fast skyscraper in Atlanta. He also established the first planned residential suburb in Atlanta. Atlanta adopted the Chicago school of architecture in the establishment of skyscrapers of elevator buildings. The city’s skyline was transformed from the picturesque High Victorian to a collection of multipurpose skyscraper office buildings and hotels. These new buildings attracted a large railroad and insurance. Atlanta’s distinctive personality is offered by the early commercial buildings and the Victorian and post-Victorian settlements that were build between 1890 and 1930. Atlanta in the southeast’s capital city, a future city with strong ties to the past, its soul being the old in the new, a heritage that enhances the quality of life in a modern city.

Essay on The Columbine Massacre - 1977 Words

During the past decade, America has witnessed a rise in mass murders carried out by youth leaving parents, teachers and school officials scrambling to figure out the motive behind such attacks. The 1999 massacre at Columbine High School was a watershed moment in American history that offered, besides grief and sorrow for lost loved ones, clues as to how to prevent copycat massacres at school campuses in the future. Theories abound in the hopes of explaining why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 and injured 21 others, yet very few hold true as time progresses and other massacres unfold. Modern-day schools have atmospheres that foster bullying and a divided social class system. The attacks perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold†¦show more content†¦The line specifically, â€Å"who have chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their time are dead† suggests a sense of detachment from the larger body of students that led to being ridicu led and the subsequent decision to murder those who chose to not accept him. Not being accepted is a common element in any case of bullying; something about Harris and Klebold set them apart from their peers so much that it enabled the jeers and ridicule they were subjected to during their time at Columbine High School which, in turn, led Eric Harris to ultimately seek out revenge. According to Cindy Beltz’s research on the Columbine High School massacre, Harris and Klebold were taunted daily at school: Here one can see that the boys lived a nightmare as they were humiliated and forced to live through degrading treatment by students who felt they were superior to them. Yet the notion that bullying may have caused the massacre at Columbine High School is a chilling one, as it lessens the blame of the attack on the perpetrators themselves and further increases it on the students who actually bullied them as well as on the school officials who did nothing to discourage it. Elysa R. Safran writes in the Journal of Emotional Abuse: Here we can use Safran’s words and apply them to the Columbine massacre and we can see thatShow MoreRelatedThe Massacre Of The Columbine1418 Words   |  6 Pageswith the infamous Columbine. Columbine is a name that will forever resonate in the minds of those who have lived through and survived the bloody incident that will forever change the world. It only took Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold one day and a few weeks of careful planning to strike fear into the eyes of a whole nation and for some families bringing their happy lives tumbling down to sadness of losing a loved one. Twelve students and one teacher were killed in the deadliest massacre before Sandy HookRead MoreThe Columbine High School Massacre2062 Words   |  9 Pages On April 20, 1999 every American life was changed forever as the news broke of what would come to be known as the Columbine High School Massacre. Immediately reporters and psychologists alike began to ask the question; why? What could cause Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, eighteen and seventeen respectively, to go off the deep end and commit one of the worst mass shootings in history? Both seniors had less than two months left in their high school career, why would they choose to commit thisRead MoreThe Columbine High School Massacre1333 Words   |  6 PagesOver the past 30 years there have been a lot of events that have had an impact on the development of crisis intervention. One that really sticks out is the Columbine High School massacre. This event occurred on April 20, 1999 in Littleton Colorado. â€Å"On this very sad day two seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris carried out a full blown assault on the school during school hours with hundreds of kids and teachers present† (Levy, 1999). These two had a plan to kill as many people as they possibly couldRead MoreThe Columbine High School Massacre890 Words   |  4 PagesIn later years, the Columbine High School Massacre reflected tales of adolescents captured by darkness where they took part in an evangelical youth movement (Pike 647). This movement caused an uproar in legislation involving church and state (Pike 647). The massacre also effected public school dress codes and behavior policies, and most importantly, shaped Americans’ reasoning about teens deviance and normality (Pike 647). September 2006, six years later, Dawson College in Montreal had an incidentRead MoreThe Columbine High School Massacre1384 Words   |  6 Pagesthe title, author, and the publishing date of your book. Columbine, Dave Cullen, 2009. What is the primary topic with which this book deal? The Columbine High School massacre, including the shooting, investigation and aftermath, is the primary topic of this book. Give a summary of the book (4-6 Sentences). Eric Harris, an undiagnosed psychopath, and Dylan Klebold, a depressive, strategically planned and placed bombs in their school, Columbine High School, and cars, but the explosives did not detonateRead MoreThe Columbine High School Massacre Essay1938 Words   |  8 PagesThe topic that I have chosen to do my research on is that of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who are infamously known for their rolls in the Columbine High School Massacre that occurred in 1999. I choose this incident for my research based on the amount of school place violence that is being seen more and more rampant in today’s society. This paper will cover the background and events of that horrible day, the individual break down of both Harris and Klebolds demographics, define the crime committedRead MorePsychology Perspectives: Columbine Massacre1537 Words   |  7 PagesPerspectives of Psychology: Understanding the Columbine Massacre In Psychology, there are perspectives and approaches that are looked into when trying to understand how the intricate human mind works. These perspectives are respectfully derived from different ideas and time periods, exemplifying different ways of thinking. These perspectives include: sociocultural, biopsychological, psychodynamic, behaviorism, cognitive, and humanism. These approaches are critically essential in solving somethingRead MoreColumbine High School Massacre Essay1952 Words   |  8 PagesColumbine High School Massacre On Tuesday, April 20 1999, Columbine High School located in Columbine Colorado an unfortunate massacre happened and many teens lost their lives. The two students responsible for this incident were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. These two senior students were responsible for killing twelve students and one teacher; they were also responsible for injuring an additional twenty one students on their rampage. A few other students were injured while trying to escapeRead MoreEssay on The Columbine Massacre and Increase Regulations Since Then2442 Words   |  10 Pages The day of the Columbine Massacre is a day that will forever burn a hole in America’s heart. The nation was shocked at the news that on April 20, 1999, high school seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris went on a precisely planned shooting rampage at their school, Columbine High School. This event killed a total of thirteen individuals, including twelve students and one highly heroic teacher, and wounded many. The reportedly troubled boys had often accused others of having bullied them, which raisedRead MoreColumbine High School Massacre : Self Control Theory Essay1709 Words   |  7 PagesColumbine High School Massacre: Self-Control Theory Briselda Villalaz San Diego State University Introduction The Columbine High School Massacre was a school shooting that took place on April 20th, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. It was a highly planned attacked that included a bomb to confused firefighters, propane tanks that were made into bombs to blow up the cafeteria, 99 explosive device, and some car bombs. The masterminds were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, they were both seniors. Collaboratively