Jonah twists awkwardly as the whale plunges to the bottom of the sea. Jonah’s hair floats in all directions: a reminder of his aquatic grave. The up-ended whale could serve as a tomb-marker. The prophet’s plight seems hopeless, but, as is suggested by sculptor John Flannagan’s optimistic title Jonah and the Whale: Rebirth Motif, Jonah will be saved from the maws of both the whale and Hell. Jonah himself requested to be tossed into the sea when he realized that his presence on a ship bound for Tarshish (and not Nineveh, where God had bid him go) had conjured […]
