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

The Sparrow

I think The Sparrow was my favourite book we've read. More of the tragedy variety, but still. Brilliantly written, speckled with humour, and it really made me ponder.
I think the shortest quote to sum most of my impressions up is found on page 404, "...comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." Emphasis on the "awful," part.
I was reminded of Dune, by the foreshadowing, but not through prophecies- through what we'd already been told of the mission to Rakhat. The first chapter tells that Emilio Sandoz was the only survivor, we merely have to wait and see how everyone dies. I just reread that last sentence and it sounds horribly gruesome, but that was what I was thinking while I read. I wonder how everyone dies, because I already know they will. It was an incredibly effective method for Russell to emphasize how important the religious themes were to everything that unfolded. Switching back and forth to Emilio's inquisition and recovery with Vincent Giuliani maintains that connection with all of Emilio's actions on Rakhat being for the Society of Jesus, and how whatever his story is leading up to, what it is causing him to question is his spirituality.
If Russell had merely written this as a narrative of the Jesuit Mission to Rakhat, and tacked Emilio's return to Earth and "recovery," onto the end, her message wouldn't have evolved in the same manner. Her religious arguments would have been lost and Emilio's final acknowledgment of having been raped would not have truly represented how deeply he'd been injured, rejected.
The inclusion of different religions also strengthened the overall theme: Jimmy the Catholic, Jewish Sofia, atheist George and Anne Edwards, and all of the personal beliefs of the various Jesuits. I appreciated the spectrum of argument this gave Russell.
Of course, everyone dying and Emilio's life being reduced to confetti was a bit disheartening, but didn't weaken a brilliant novel.

Mistakes? Likely not.

Many of the posts people have written for this text are discussing the idea we talked about in class that the crew somehow made a mistake in either the planning or execution of the mission, however I would like to consider this, not as we did, looking back on the mission with an outsider’s perspective, but by trying to imagine if different decisions and actions were even feasible considering who the characters are and how they think.

I believe we are all agreed that at least until the point where the signal from Rakhat arrives, no one does anything to cause the mission to fail. At this point, the first possibility for different action takes place, instead of calling in his coworkers and superiors, upon receiving the transmission from another world, Jimmy brings his friends in to hear it. If he hadn’t done this, the Jesuit mission may never have been planned because Emilio’s comment would not have sent everyone thinking as to how it could be accomplished. Calling this the mistake that caused the mission to fail is interesting, however, because it implies that the only way the mission could have been successful is if it had been nonexistent. Granted, in that case, none of the characters would have met their horrible fates, but it is a cop out as a choice for preventing the failure of the mission.

Discussing the planning of the mission, I believe that saying they had other choices they could have made in the way they chose to run the mission betrays the characters. Though I agree with most of the class that unmanned craft and attempts at radio communication prior to sending a manned mission would have been a good idea, the characters that we meet in this text would never have gone that route. When everything seems to work out in every stage of planning, why would they question their plan? Particularly as each instance of things working out further backs up Emilio’s belief that they are going on a mission planned for them by God.

Within the mission, I don’t think the fuel situation that stranded them on the planet would have made much of a difference. Most of the deaths that took place would not have been prevented by making a timely retreat to the orbiter. D.W. and Anne were attacked out of the blue, Sofia, Jimmy and the others were caught up in a local conflict that resulted in their deaths. None of these would have been prevented by being able to return to the asteroid. Even if they had fuel, I believe Emilio still would have accepted the protection of Supaari.

The one aspect of the mission that I believe they truly made a mistake in was the planting of a garden. They had enough scientists with them to understand the ways in which foreign species can take over a new land and disrupt an ecology, even though they say they chose low-impact plants, I don’t think that they would have necessarily planted a garden without having more data on the local ecology. Side note: who can think of another time when a garden got people into trouble? (Hint: it’s religious, too).

For a discussion of Sofia’s rebellion see Jen’s post, where you can also get a look at our fun list of who should go on a contact mission.

Affirmative Action in Space

We didn't have time to discuss it in class, but I wanted to raise an important issue that nobody else seemed to consider in staffing their expeditions. Is it important for us to stock our ship with a racially and sexually diverse staff?

It makes sense to me that the team we send isn't only important in its capacity to keep themselves alive and interface with the aliens; they are equally important in the impression they give of us as a species. Are you comfortable, then, with the idea of the aliens imagining us as a bunch of white guys?

Your first instinct is to say "well, whoever is the most skilled at each necessary position." A fair argument, but what if you have two people who would be equally suited to the task, only one is white, and the other black? Do you follow the path of fairness - deciding randomly - or make the choice that better represents our diversity (and out identity) as a species?

Same goes for male-female; in the book, Voelker (eternal scum as he is portrayed) claims that the greatest mistake was in sending women along on the mission. Would you be too worried about the possible relationships that could develop and harm the mission, or the possibility of pregnancy? Or would you rather represent our species properly, as sexually dimorphic but otherwise, ceteris parabus, equals?

Psychology

Like Jen, I was very aware of the parallels between the alien/future societies in this book and in Time Machine, though the societies on Rakhat were much more developed than the Morlocks and Eloi. I suppose that what I found most interesting in the alien contact portion of the book was the team’s willingness to settle into a routine life among a group of people who were obviously not the society they came looking for. I understand that some of them wanted to take the time to study certain cultural aspects more in depth, and maybe it’s just me, but I would want to get more of an overarching view of Rakhat before settling in to examine the details.

The part of the book that was most interesting to me overall, however, is the portion set farther in the future, when we see the struggles of the other Jesuits to help Emilio and draw his story out. The psychological transformation Emilio goes through between the two time periods is so huge and seemingly abrupt that it continued to draw me on to find out what happened to him. Of the two Emilios, however, I found the traumatized one more engaging to read about because he was more complex and his struggles seemed more real.

I also enjoyed the interactions Emilio had with John Condotti and with the Father General. Both of them were trying to help Emilio to recover, but did not really know what it was they were trying to help him recover from. Because of this lack of knowledge, they would make mistakes in the ways they chose to deal with him. The Father General was more perceptive in his treatment of Emilio, but both men developed a loyalty to Emilio throughout the story even before they knew all of the details of what he had been though. I think much of this is due to Emilio’s perseverance. He does not give up on himself when he has trouble with his hands, and as the Father General points out, “Emilio Sandoz is still trying to find meaning in what happened to him. He is still trying to find God in it all” (400).

Bringing this back to something more relevant to the class, I was interested in the beauty being good concept that Phil brought up as well. Not only does Russell have the characters immediately assume that the beautiful music is good, but she also spends much time discussing Sofia’s beauty, the beauty of Rakhat, and several other things. My question is: where does that leave D.W., whose appearance Russell takes pains to disparage every chance she gets?

a sparrow's chance in hell

To begin, I'd like to say that my favorite line in The Sparrow comes from Father General Guiliani on page 402. After reading through the terrible account of Emilio's final months on Rakhat, I was as emotionally strung out as possible. Then, in response to a simile supposing Emilio had fallen in love with God, comes the following:

"'Offhand,' said the Father General wearily, in a voice dry as August grass, 'I'd say the honeymoon is over.'"

I found this line to be cathartic, a sort of rationalization of everything that had happened in the book to that point. It really cast into relief the meaning of a relationship one has with God...Todorov discusses the impossibility of two-way communication with the supernatural (sorry to refer to something we haven't yet read as a class), but one may interpret nearly anything as a sign from God, and who is Todorov to declare that it isn't? Reality is, at best, defined by our ability to perceive it.

I don't feel qualified to wade into the sort of mucky theological discussions that could emerge from this incredibly dense and complex book. My original plan was to write a section about the religious elements and then a separate section about the sci-fi elements of the novel, but then it occurred to me that the only other The Sparrow post up now features that same distinction, and I assume many others will too. Therefore, I think I'd rather consider the religious and sci-fi elements as all-of-a-kind; after all, we had no problem with it in Dune, where the religious and technological had mixed over millennia. The fact that this book opens approximately ten years from now should serve as no obstacle in this regard.

In case you didn't catch the reading group questions, I'd like to take an excerpt to set the groundwork for Earth circa 2019. This is from section 2:

"This story takes place from the years 2019 to 2060. The United States is no longer the predominant world power, having lost two trade wars with Japan, which is now supreme in both space and on Earth. Poverty is rampant. Indentured servitude is once more a common practice, and "future brokers" mine ghettos for promising children to educate in return for a large chunk of their lifetime income."

By 2060, it is strongly implied, the Earth is straining to support its population of 16 billion. On page 379, Emilio points out the suffering of children as the price humanity pays for individual freedoms. The strict population controls on Rakhat may be horrible, he admits, but at least they do not allow for the starvation of the impoverished. Indeed, it seems that the technological developments on Earth even at that point cannot compensate for the burdens of the masses, as humanity must turn to space to gather enough minerals to support industry. The Jesuits are strong, so Earth apparently retains its spiritual hunger. The citizens of Rakhat, on the other hand, seem to be completely occupied by material concerns; the Runa cannot really imagine anything else, and the Jana'ata are, for the most part, too worried about status (presumably so that they will be able to reproduce) to waste much time thinking about their souls. With one visible exception, even their art is purely hedonistic or practical. Their songs are used to coordinate hunting or to commemorate a particularly memorable tryst. The only exception is the bizarre liquid-painting ritual the Marc observes, which may or may not be a form of worship; Russell never touches on it again.

Although Russell's idea for this novel came from the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage, the differences are immense. Although Columbus explicitly set out to convert other civilizations to Christianity, the Jesuits are on no Mission to Rakhat. As far as we are told, the only time any member of the expedition hopes that any of the aliens may worship God is Emilio immediately before he is first raped.

Really, though, I was surprised at how unlike us these aliens were (concerning religion), considering how ridiculously similar they wound up being in many other ways. I was disappointed by the physiological similarities, especially in terms of nourishment. Having heard about scurvy throughout the bookout, I was hoping that some aspect of the team's diet would be the cause, that I could see something uniquely alien. But it was not to be; while some foods tasted good or bad, it was almost all food, and easily digested by humans at that. My disappointment extended to the immediate physical similarity of the aliens to certain Earth species, their apparently entirely verbal language, their possession of identical sets of emotional responses (right down to, I was horrified to read, laughing!). The differences weren't sharp enough to cause me to feel that this was something alien; rather, we entered Uncanny Valley territory, something human but slightly off. The sad part is that the similarity wasn't obvious right away. Only after learning a little bit about the Jana'ata did I realize we were basically the same, with just a few deviations.

I could have felt joy at the idea that we share so much with these aliens. Unfortunately, I had gotten myself so psyched up over the idea of aliens being truly "different" from us that I found the slightest similarity grating (which isn't to say that the similarities I found were only slight!) Here I'm reminded of the Mulefa creatures from the His Dark Materials series, which lived in a world that had taken an entirely different morphological path in its evolution than our vertebrate history. They were sentient, but communicated physically and verbally at the same time, making it difficult for humans to replicate their language accurately. That is the kind of different alien I was hoping for! Not a bunch of sociopathic ecology nuts in cat suits.

Lastly, I feel that the major thing that caused the expedition to go wrong was its assumption that it would meet with a more intelligent species than humanity, whereas the residents of Rakhat are clearly our technological inferiors. Next time, let's hope they send some sort of vast warship filled to the brim with gung-ho space marines, to better interface with the enemyaliens.

P.S. Did anyone else see any similarities between the Jana'ata and the Ssi-ruuk? Just asking.