The Prodigal Son
HISTORY
The Prodigal Son is a Parable of Jesus, appearing in the Gospel of Luke. The story follows the youngest of a man’s two sons. The youngest son asks for his inheritance prematurely, is granted it by his father, and wastes it all. Starving, the son returns home, begging for forgiveness, which his father lovingly grants. Celebrating his son’s return, the father throws a feast, which angers his older son. The father tells his oldest son that everything he (the father) owns belongs to him (the eldest son), but that they should celebrate the return of the youngest son, as “he was lost but now he is found.” This story represents the redemption of a sinner, where God is symbolized by the father and the sons represent Man.
Created by Rodin in 1905, this particular piece depicts the youngest son after wasting his fortune. Agonized, he twists his body in an unnatural position. Although this is Christian art, this depiction of pain does not conjure holiness or divinity.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
This piece depicts an agonized figure, the Prodigal son, kneeling on a jagged rock with his arms extended above his head. The Prodigal Son seems to be desperately calling out to the heavens in painful remorse. His body is oddly proportioned and jaggedly sculpted to convey the body as a representation of the inner self, the emotional. The bad he has done and the trouble he has caused is exemplified through the roughness of his body and his pained facial expression. His outward appearance reflects his inner pain, demonstrating the ancient belief that the external mirrors one’s internal state. His posture indicates that he is pained emotionally and physically, so he is pleading to the heavens for forgiveness for all his wrongdoings.
BIOLOGY
The subject of this piece puts himself in an uncomfortable position. We know he feels both emotional pain because of what he has done to make him feel so guilty and physical pain because of the way he has thrown himself of the rugged, sharp rock beneath him. However, the true focus of this piece is on the tension in the man’s body. The art highlights his agony through his physicality, his strained muscles and his sorrowful expression being the most prominent ways by which the artist reflects the subject’s pain. For a man in this situation, the pain signals would be sent to the spinal cord and then into the brain, where they register in the somatosensory cortex and frontal cortex. The somatosensory cortex perceives physical pain. This would be the pain of the jagged rock against the man’s body as sensed by mechanical nociceptors. Muscle tension is one of the body’s reflex reactions to guard against injury and pain, so his obvious straining exhibits his body’s reaction to his physical and emotional pain. The frontal cortex is where emotional pain is registered, and this would cause his sorrowful expression. If the man was driven to tears it could be the body using crying as a method of decreasing pain since psychic tears carry the natural painkiller leucine enkephalin.