The Prodigal Son

THE PRODIGAL SON

Patrick White

         Patrick White was an Australian author widely regarded as one of the major English novelists of the twentieth century.  His novels and short stories enjoy wide critical acclaim.  His works include twelve novels, two short story collections, eleven plays and a few non-fiction.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973.

The Prodigal Son is an essay by Patrick White which vividly describes the sentiments of an expatriate. In this essay, Patrick White considers himself as a prodigal son. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the parables of Jesus in The Bible. In the story, a father has two sons.  The younger son asks the father for his inheritance and the father grants his son’s request.  However, the younger son is prodigal and spends his fortune lavishly and becomes a destitute. The younger son is forced to return home empty handed and begs his father to accept him back as a servant. The father pardons him and tells the elder son that ‘he was lost and now he is found’. Patrick White finds similarities between him and the prodigal son of The Bible.

Patrick White was himself an expatriate.  He was an Australian but was born and brought up in England.  He had spent more than 20 years of his life in abroad.  He studied in an English public school and had his higher education at King’s College, Cambridge. During those days, he had a high opinion on Britain.  Later when he wandered through west European countries and United States, he began to think of his own country, Australia.  The Second World War that broke out then also intensified his love for his motherland.  Earlier, life in the European countries seemed to be brilliant, intellectual and highly desirable to the author.  But now it appeared to be disgusting and meaningless.  He started thinking that he achieved nothing and his life rootless.
 
During the Second World War, Patrick White had to be there in the Middle East countries. The desert landscape found there aggravated his desire to go back to Australia. But, later when he visited Greece, the perfection of antiquity and the warm human relationship which he experienced there made him forget all about Australia.  Soon he realised that though he loved Greece, the country was not his own. So he came back to Australia, bought a farm at Castle Hill and with a Greek friend started to cultivate vegetables and flowers.

After returning back to Australia, White forgot himself as a writer.  He did not write anything. The Aunt’s Story, a novel which he had written immediately after the war was well received by the critics in abroad and failed to receive the attention of the critics in Australia as usual. He spent his life at the farm house eating and sleeping.  Nothing seemed more important than those activities.  But suddenly he began to grow discontented.  He realised that the only successful thing he could do was writing novels.  He wanted to write about the life of the Australians.  He wrote Voss, the story which he conceived during his stay in London. This novel proved that the Australian novel was not ‘dreary, dun coloured offspring of journalistic realism’. It presented the voice of the Australia to the world.

Patrick White loved the landscape of Australia though it was shabby.  He started appreciating even the ugly things in Australian life.  He adored the simple and humble life of the Australians. These are the personal reasons why Patrick White decided to stay back in Australia.  He considered the appreciation letters sent by unknown Australians praising White for depicting the Australian life in his novels as the best reward for his decision to stay in Australia.