Whoa, Hold on people

After reading through a bunch of the other blog posts, I'm struck with a horrible thought: you're largely a bunch of moral relativists! I cannot have this; this will not stand. Let's get a few things out of the way.

1. The moral of the story is "be suspicious of your own certainty." Russell says so in the Reader's Guide at the end. I'm glad we worked that out.

2. Russell's answer to "does the end justify the means?" is "No!" (Seriously, with the exclamation point and everything). Which leads me to my next point...

3. Ex post facto rationalization. Russell goes out of her way to leave the question of divine intervention a question; if The Sparrow is the story of a man losing his faith, Children of God is about him fighting to get it back, using whatever weapons he has at his disposal. Sandoz is the kind of man who is constantly trying to make the best of a bad situation, even joking around with his captors on the Giordano Bruno. It's natural for him to seek sense in the bad things around him, and from the moment he goes of Quell, you can observe him steadily reconstructing a mental framework that has room for God.

Several times Sandoz makes sardonic comments hinting at atheism, but it's always clear that these are mere jokes to him. His need for a God who understands and loves him, not to mention wouldn't torture him needlessly, are so strong that I believe he would take any evidence he could find to justify his own experiences.

If Isaac didn't exist, then Sandoz would have to find his music elsewhere. And he would, even if it would be in a different form.

4. To anyone who thought the ending wrapped things up too neatly: are you sick? Do you hate Sandoz even more than Russell does? Give the man a break!

P.S. Did anybody else catch shades of Dune in here? The ideological differences between mother and child, the lack of appropriate monitoring in the south, groups of nomadic warriors...now that I think of it, the same intercultural communicative aspects exist in both sets of books, but Dune glosses them over by making it so the main characters don't really have any trouble communicating. Curse these prevalent themes!



And now, to mix things up, some Sparrow/Children of God superlatives.

Most Likely to Possess an Unexpected but Necessary Skill
John Candotti

Most Likely to be Beautiful After Being Put Through a Meat Grinder
Sofia Mendes

Most Unfinished Business
Supaari VaHaptaa
(r/u Vincenzo Giuliani)

Most Underused Unintentionally Hilarious Character
Jholaa
(r/u Edward Behr)

Most Testosterone
Djalao

Most Conceited Death
Hlavin Kitheri

Most Salami
Nico D'Angeli

Most Unrelatable
Danny Iron Horse

Most Reliant on Silver Linings
Emilio Sandoz