The Return Of The Prodigal Son Analysis

The Return of the Prodigal Son

The story of the Prodigal Son is about a man who has two sons, the “Elder son” and the “Younger son”. The Elder son is very faithful to his father and to God. The younger son convinces his father to give him his inheritance before he dies and leaves the family. He goes off to distant lands and almost destroys himself. He decides he needs to return home to survive. He doesn’t expect to be welcomed well and to be treated like a work hand. Instead, his father welcomes him back with open arms. The elder son is not pleased with his dad’s actions; he is overcome with bitterness and jealousy which shows the reader that he might not be as virtuous as he thinks he is. The book The Return of the Prodigal Son analyses this story from several different perspectives. The first is

from the painter Rembrandt’s perspective, because he painted a painting called “Prodigal Son”, which was of the younger son and the father being reconnected. The next point of view is the author Henri J.M. Nouwen, who talks about his journey with this story through his priesthood.

The last thing the author touches on is the way that the prodigal son is a reoccurring theme though the Bible, with characters such as Adam and Jesus. This paper will be focused on the story of the younger son; it will cover Rembrandt’s, Nouwen’s, and Biblical journeys similar to the younger son, as well as my own.

Rembrandt’s last painting before he died was the Prodigal Son. Nouwen traces Rembrandts journey as the younger son through his life style and choices as well as his art: the way it changed and the way it was perceived. Nouwen claims, “Together with his unfinished painting Simeon and the Child Jesus, the Prodigal Son shows the painters’s perception of his aged self” (Nouwen, 29). The author puts in another painting done by Rembrandt, but this one looks very different. The characters within do not look tired, but instead are younger and full of life. It is the portrait of a man with long curly hair and a woman, who the author says is Rembrants and his wife. Nouwen describes the two characters as “Drunk, with a half-open mouth and sexually greedy eyes… with his right hand he lifts a half-empty glass, while with his left

he touches the lower back of a girl whose eyes are no less lustful than his own”(Nouwen 30). Nouwen at this point claims that Rembrandts at this point in his life was like the prodigal son when he left for distant lands. Rembrandt had just left for Amsterdam, he “had all of the characteristics of the prodigal son: brash, self-confident, spendthrift, sensual and very arrogant”(Nouwen 30). The author states that money was Rembrandt’s driving force through this period, as he “made a lot, spent a lot, and lost a lot” (Noumen 32). After year of living like this, Rembrandt’s life began to spiral downward just like the youngest son. He and his wife had many children who died at very young ages and when one finally survived, his wife eventually died as well. He then continues downward into an unsuccessful relationship that leads to lawsuits, and his “popularity as a painter plummeted”(Nouwen 32). Eventually he was forced to sell all of his belongings to avoid bankruptcy. This was his rock bottom. To survive, he sold all of his work, as well as the works of others, that he collected. Becoming mostly free from his debt only in his fifties, he finally started his journey back home. This translated into his work as “his paintings during this period show that the man disillusionments did not embitter him”(Nouwen 33). The creation of the journey of the prodigal son shows the completion of his journey.
Nouwen’s own personal journey as the prodigal son is much less of the physical journey (though he did spend many of his years away from home) then Rembrandt and more of an emotional journey. Nouwen says to him “leaving home means ignoring the truth that God has ‘fashioned me in secret, molded me in the depths of the earth and knitted me together in my mother’s womb’” (Nouwen 37). He states over and over that home is where he can hear a soft voice telling him he is the beloved, yet he has run away from it many times in search for something else. Much like the younger son ran away to find the something new, Nouwen runs away from God to find what society tells him are important: love, success, money and justification of worth. He says societies’ voices “told him to prove that he is worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful” (Nowen 40). When he succumbs to these voices he says his “life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle”(Nouwen 42). He states at one point that he is wasting what God gave him on trying to use them for the wrong reasons, praise and affirmation, and if he doesn’t achieved these reasons he gets jealous and bitter. Every time he gets trapped by these voices, he realizes the only one he missed and is fulfilled by is the voice calling him beloved and he returns. He says “I had to choose between destroying myself or trusting that the love I was looking for did, in fact, exist . . . back home!”(Nouwen 50). This voice always welcomes him back and never turns on him much like the father of the younger son. The father prepares a feast for his son; he does not question or resent the son for leaving.
Nouwen mentions that the story of the prodigal son is used many times in the Bible. The other examples of the story are not as direct. He mentions Adam as being a prodigal son, stating “The prodigal son’s “No” reflects Adam’s original rebellion: his rejection of the God in whose love was created and by whose love we are sustained. It is the rebellion that places me outside the garden, out of reach of the tree of life. It is the rebellion that makes me dissipate myself in a ‘distant country’”(Nouwen 43). His main example of a prodigal son from the Bible is Jesus. Jesus’ journey as the prodigal son was a little different in the fact that he was not a rebellious son like the younger son, but even so, he followed the same path. He started his journey by leaving his father in heaven and becoming a human down on earth. Once in the foreign land he could hear “the voice calling him Beloved, and soon after rejecting Satan’s voice daring him to prove to the world that he is worth being loved” (Nouwen 54). These are the same voices and pressures that Nouwen could hear on his journey to a distant land. He started collecting his apostle and giving public ministries, as tension grew. According to poet Frere Pierre Marie, he soon “came to know exile, hostility and loneliness” (Nouwen 57). His journey ended once Judas gave him up and he returned to God on the cross the day of the crucifixion. Nouwen did not talk about Jacob in the book but he also took the same journey as the younger son. Jacob was a twin to his brother Esau, but was considered the younger son of their father Abraham. When their father was getting older and was about to die he was going to give a blessing to his oldest son. When Jacob heard of this he found a way to trick his father into giving him the blessing. After he got the blessing, he was afraid of what his brother would do to him and he fled to a distant land. There he worked for five years to marry the one he desired, but was tricked into marrying her sister. He agreed to work for another five years for the one he desired hand in marriage. He, much like the prodigal son, was working as a hired hand when he could be living in comfort at home. He decided to make the long journey home worried about whether his brother would ever forgive him since he wronged him and stole from him. On this journey home, he was internally debating what to do, and he decided to send cattle and gifts to his brother and continue. Once in his land, he had a strong connection with God and was renamed, and when reunited with his brother, a celebration accrued. His brother welcomed him back with open arms just like the younger son’s father did.
My Theological journey has been much like that of the younger son. I grew up in a city in central Colorado that is known for being the most religious city in Colorado. At a young age my parents made my whole family go to church almost every Sunday. As we got older we starting going less and less, and when I was about ten we stopped going completely. At that point I started to turn away from God; this did not go well with some of my classmates. Many of these classmates acted like the older son, very upright and not forgiving to those who had turned their back. Growing up in this pressure made some students turn back to god, but made others like myself push farther and farther away. When it was finally time to go to college, I could not wait to get as far from this pressure as possible. My parents wanted me to stay close to home, but I could not. I knew I had to leave and made my decision to come to Milwaukee. Once here I felt the pressure from society that Nouwen talked about. I felt like I had to get straight A’s to be able to live the life I want and be a productive member of society. As I have gotten older, I have realized I do not want to stay in this distant land. I am going to try somewhere new. Unlike the prodigal son I have not yet hit rock bottom and I am not quite ready to return home, but maybe that is coming and then I will complete my journey as the younger son.
All these example show the different ways the journey of the younger son can be performed and portrayed. Rembrandt took the physical journey of the prodigal son through his life and his paintings. Nouwen took the mental journey of the prodigal son, physically being away from home, but never returning. Instead, mentally, his thoughts and actions went away from God and through his journey returning and finding fulfillment in God. Jesus took the journey for different reason, because instead of in rebellion, it was in obedience to his father, God. Jacob and I took the physical and mental journeys of the younger son by straying from God and our homes. In The Return of the Prodigal Son Nouwen represents all of the different ways people have taken the journey of the prodigal son articulately in a well-organized manner.