This is a honest prison drawing made by a juvenile prisoner in Tököl prison in Hungary. Why honest? He don't try to hide himself behind hardly interpretable symbols. Here you can see plenty of easily recognizable symbols. The young prisoners are not trained to hide their feelings at the beginning of their sentence. To mention the intimate feelings in a prison is dangerous because the other inmates are able to misuse these information arbitrary.
Here you can see a small pig who fights a dragon. Lets analyze the pig for the first:
- The shape of the piggy is comics-like, maybe it is taken from a newspaper
- The facial expression of the pig is anger and anxiety
- The tail of the pig is a stereotypical sign of the young pigs.
- He holds a wand in his "hand" with a star on the end: this is a wand which are used by angels in fairy tales
- The hat is also funny
From this we can conclude that the artist tries to emphasize his inner childhood for the other prisoners. But this is a dangerous movement indeed. Therefore the artist tries to hide his immature psyche with the size of the pig in comparison to the dragon:
- This dragon is lame and exhausted, his eye is tired or filled with fear because of the drawing the dilated veins.
- The muzzle is horse-like with sharp teeth. It means that the enemy of the little pig was powerful, merciless and giant.
- The hanging tongue symbolizes that the lame dragon is defeated.
- The limbs and wings are worked out improperly, this means that the dragon is not perfect. This can be the interpretation of the of the general conditions of becoming a criminal: domestic violence, child abuse, divorced parents, gang activity, bullying etc. The artist can clearly perceive that the opposite side, the other inmates, suffered also psycho traumas in their past, and therefore they have to compensate their lameness.
The little pig can defeat a big dragon: this a parallel to the fight of David and Goliath. David is a prisoner at the start of his prison carrier and Goliath is the prison system itself: prison gangs, guards, bars, handcuffs, truncheons, drugs etc. But don't forget that this picture was made by a juvenile, it can refer also to the story of the three little pigs. This prisoner has to find alliances in the prison to beat the enemy and he has the ability to do that in himself certainly.
For the reader I have to mention that sometimes I give also lectures on meaning of prison drawings. The most frequent critique I receive during these lectures that the prisoners can not know the stories like David and Goliath, because they are not well educated. This can be true. But I did not meet these prisoners and my aim to analyze these pictures in not to show their psychological diagnosis. I would rather to show the inner reality of the prisons. In this case for instance I try to tell a story on the start of a prison carrier by the general symbols of a drawing. I presume that the human culture is fully independent from the education, from the majority of the society and from the wishes of the so called elite. Therefore I say: you can notice the meaning of the core cultural issues in the prison drawings like parallels, also a submerged culture which is not visible outside the prisons' perimeter walls. It is quite interesting however that these core cultural issues in prisons have the same values as myths of ancient humankind.
And a short story to illustrate the three little pig tale in prison setting. There was a juvenile inmate in the Tököl prison whose name was "Alex" and he was a head of a youngster gang. He had two good friends to spend the time together to try to destroy the prison system. Once he committed a superficial self harm to threat the prison guards. He stated that he commits suicide if he would not get more better regime conditions. His friends did the same. Alex wanted to speak to the prison director, and they negotiated in a confidential setting. The prison director succeed to prevent the mass self harm. Alex widespread a story for the other inmates also for the staff that the prison director begged and even cried to him not cause a full scale riot in the prison, because he would be fired instantly. This Alex is at the top of his prison carrier, he shows an effective example for the painter of this picture.
A képen számos érdekességet lehet felfedezni:- a kismalac jóval kisebb, mint a sárkány, elszánt a tekintete, mintha mindenképpen győzni akarna,
- a sárkány teste csökevényes, a lábai ki sem nőttek,
- a jobb kezén hatalmas karom látható,
- érdekes a sárkány eres szeme,
- vajon miért harapja el a sárkány a nyelvét?
A rajz véleményem szerint tehetségről, egyedi látásmódról árulkodik, de lehet másolt kép is.
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