Reading Response 3: Character in Kooser's "Tattoo"

In chapter three of Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway, she writes that one of the most important characteristics a well-rounded character should have is the ability to change. After all, no one wants to read a book in which nothing happens, nor does one wish to read about a main character who is not transformed at all by his or her experiences (especially those experiences the readers share with the character). The changes, however, do not have to be dramatic in order to be effective. In fact, I think one of the most poignant passages the class had to read this week, Ted Kooser’s “Tattoo”, showed how changing a small detail—what a tattoo looks like— can effectively re-write a character and readers’ responses to said character.

Kooser begins by describing the original tattoo, a “dripping dagger held in the fist / of a shuddering heart”, something the old man had gotten years ago as a “statement” (122). Barely a sentence, and yet already parts of the man’s character already come into focus. When he was a young man, we can assume that he must have felt like he had something to prove, and so he chose a tattoo that screams of violence and death. This gives the impression that the man was a bit of a tough/gangbanger, which dovetails nicely with the next lines: “He looks like someone you had to reckon with, / strong as a stallion, fast and ornery…” (122). But over the years, the tattoo has faded into “…a bruise / on a bony old shoulder…” (122). So this tough young thug is now a worn down, thin old man, possibly on his last legs—the image of a bruise playing into the idea of illness and injury, even death. His heart “has gone soft and blue with stories,” as if all of his brashness and violence has been worn away like glass in the ocean, leaving a wistful, lonely broken being.

Where once readers might have responded with dislike towards a man who chose to wreath himself in images of violence, we now feel pity for his lost youth, and tenderness for the seemingly harmless, gentle old soul he has become. All this from one detail, one small change... one tattoo.