David Owens

English 102 H

Brena Walker

To me the parable of the prodigal son from the bible has always been the quintessential father story. The young man, with a heart-full of freedom, a pocket full of money, a head full of dreams and not much else, goes out into the world to make his mark. As he's later completely broke and feeding the hogs, surely a low point for a young Jewish guy, and wanting to eat their food, I'm sure he is asking himself "Sol, what the hell just happened here?" Of course the obvious point of the parable is to show the son's foolishness and the father's love and forgiveness, but something behind the scenes that I'm wondering is: Did his father do his job in preparing him for life away from home?

In our present society, there is much said about men and fathers. From Christian movements such as Promise Keepers, to the Mythopoetic men's movement spearheaded by Robert Bly, it is obvious that men are finally waking up to the fact that society has been changing. Since the start of the industrial revolution, our society went from families working together to meet their own needs, to people, usually men, going out to work in factories. This has naturally caused some differences in the family structure. Rather than a father being there at home to work side by side with his children, showing them the art of his craft, he was now just the guy who dragged himself out of bed in the morning and dragged himself home in the evening.

I remember my own childhood. My father was a machine operator for Owens Corning, and was well known to be excessive in all areas of his life. Not only would he work overtime several days of the week, but he would play overtime after work several days of the week as well. My parents got a divorce when I was 12 years old, but actually it seemed like he was absent long before that. What did I learn from my father that has helped me in my adult life? Well, some basics I learned was that if I ever have kids, I won't come home drunk and scream at their mother--they probably won't enjoy that. I learned that providing a roof over their heads and food on the table is a great thing, that many fathers don't bother to do, but that in itself seems like not much at all compared to actually letting them know who you are, and if you have hopes and dreams. And finally I learned that getting lung cancer and having to try and build a life's worth of relationship with your youngest son in your last six months of life is not the best course of action. The previous 15 years would have been a more suitable time frame for that to occur.

It seems to me that too many times we have to look at our relationships in retrospect, when many times it is too late. In the story of the prodigal son, even though the father welcomes him home with open arms, the young man is still without an inheritance and has fallen heir to his brother's scorn. There are many more cases in literature that show strained family ties. For example, in the book Cry, the Beloved Country (Paton), there are some tragic father-son relationships. Take for example the case of Stephen and Absalom Kumalo. A simple, native minister goes to the big city to try and revive his fractured family, only to find it in a shambles, deeply scarred by murder on the part of the son. I'm sure that the elder Kumalo spent many nights remembering the smiling face of his toddler son, and wondering what he could have done to change the dreadful outcome of his life. Was there something that he could have done to change the circumstances of his son's adult life? Or, was the guilt totally in the hands of Absalom Kumalo and his associates? I wonder. It is safe to say, by reading this novel, that Stephen Kumalo was largely unaware of the different world that was Sophiatown, Johannesburg South Africa. He was a Zulu man, raised in a small village, whose largest task was trying to figure out why corn had grown increasingly shorter, and how to keep dry in his leaky church when it rained. His greatest material need was a stove for his wife to cook on and a new clerical collar. Did he have any idea that his son would be a murderer, or even capable of such? What could he have done differently? I'm sure that as a Christian, he taught his son the ten commandments, and "Thou shalt not kill," but did he just barely gloss over that one, assuming it would never need heavy drilling? Did he focus heavily instead on "Honor your father and mother…" because his son was being a bit sassy towards his mom about taking out the trash?

Then, in another realm of the book there is James Jarvis, a white planter of some means. Mr. Jarvis is, like Stephen Kumalo, faced with a dreadful situation. Where Kumalo's son was guilty of murder, Mr. Jarvis's son was the victim of that selfsame murder. Again, like the case with Kumalo, his son was involved in a life totally foreign to his father. The elder Jarvis is not what I would call a racist, but just one who was raised to see the whites and the native Africans as separate. His son, Arthur Jarvis, was deeply involved in the affairs of the natives, and was somewhat a champion of their causes. This attitude comes from an inner conviction of Arthur's, not from training in his home. Again, I can't help but think of my own life. My father was, when I was a small boy, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and was pretty open about his feelings on the subject of race. One would think that if we as individuals were merely the products of our environments, that both Arthur Jarvis and myself would have been bigoted, or at least held a separatist philosophy. I am glad to say this is not the case in either account. Arthur Jarvis, posthumously through his written words, spoke to his father, and allowed him to see his soul. He spoke words that were sometimes hard for his father to read, and the elder Jarvis even stopped reading his works at one point because it hurt him. But, he found himself drawn to this man who shared his name if not his philosophy, and was drawn to his cause by the raw heart and passion of his words.

It is sad in this novel, that one as noble as Arthur Jarvis has to die, and Absalom Kumalo has found himself involved in such a grievous deed. Absalom finds out too late that friends in crime seldom stay friends in conviction. At least, though, he tries to be as honorable as can be, and admits his guilt when his accomplices are slithering their way out of it. Absalom, like the prodigal son, desires to return to his fathers house, but sadly this is no hog pen he is working in. It is the Pretoria prison, and it is not the scorn of an angry brother he is facing, but the hangman's noose. It is also painful irony that the ones who are guilty of the death of Arthur Jarvis are the very ones he has worked to save. It reminds me of the biblical story of Christ, who came to the slums of earth from paradise to save his chosen people, and these are the ones who eventually kill him.

Are all lost then? Is Kumalo and Jarvis simply destined to pine away the rest of their lives in misery? We never hear the rest of the story with the prodigal son, whether he and his brother ever buried the hatchet, but in the book Cry, the Beloved Country, we see several instances where good came from the tragedies. Are the "prodigal father", my dad, Stephen Kumalo, and James Jarvis responsible for the way their children's lives turned out? Well, nature versus nurture is a debate that has been argued for many years now, and I am not arrogant enough to claim that I have the answer. I will, however, say that we all leave our mark on those in our lives. I am sure that Absalom saw his father's simple faith in action, and honored his father by confessing his true fault in the murder. And Stephen, by experiencing the slums of Johannesburg, learned to see the need for structure and basic means of survival in Ixopo. And I am sure that Arthur Jarvis gained strength from his father's silent wisdom and sense of fairness, while at the same time, James saw that he himself could enrich his own soul by helping those in need in his own back yard. The prodigal son was allowed to experience hunger and need in order to see that material comforts are just that, comforts, and not available without a price. And perhaps my father, as he lay in his deathbed unable to walk, saw that maybe the "traditional" father role of providing food and shelter to his offspring was not as important as providing himself, his humanity, to his family. And perhaps his youngest son, who was afraid of him in childhood, finally learned to see his father through human eyes and became proud to share his last name.

I think that the task of teaching a child to be an adult is not one that can be undertaken lightly, and cannot be done without mistake. But, if in retrospect you realize that you learned from the experience, and are open-minded enough to change an incorrect course of action in mid stream, then it is as successful an action as can be accomplished. I guess as human beings, the role of parent and teacher is a job of balancing on a thin line. You are responsible for teaching and correcting, but ultimately the actions of a child are their own, products of their own free will. I suppose ultimately that the signs of a successful parent is the ability to love without fear, fear without becoming a fascist dictator over your child, and willingness to clean up the poop when your child comes home from the pig pen-- if you are so lucky.