 An equally significant departure from the grammar of tragic compassion is the denial of the necessity of proposition 2) the sufferer does not deserve his suffering. This denial comes out in one of the paradigm texts for Christian compassion, the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.11–32. The younger of two sons asks his father for his share of the inheritance ahead of time, and the son takes the money and goes abroad where he “squander[s] his property in loose living” (vs. 13). When the money is depleted a famine descends on his country of residence, and he is destitute. He gets a job feeding pigs, and is miserable and hungry. He has the bright idea of returning to his father in the role of a common laborer on the home farm.