• My unorganized thoughts immediately after reading The Sparrow by 
  Mary Doria Russell:
  • I had an initial reluctance to read a book by a convert from Catholicism about “faith”
  • Many parallels and foreshadowings to the eventual disaster
    • Fr. Sandoz and Sofia’s initial missteps due to cultural misunderstandings 
    • a passing reference to a “Tripple Alliance” by an alien
    • Stories about Jesuits mutilated in the New World
    • Runa panic at eating meat
    • Mention of lack of children or a strict boundary to age cohorts of children (brought to mind infanticide in pre-modern tribes)
    • These warnings are all obvious and not hidden; you are meant to see them and have sense of foreboding.
    • You are also meant to think that you would not make their mistakes.
    • V. is an excellent character in this sense. You hate him, but you are him.
  • It is not an adventure book, characters are not heroic in the usual literary sense. I knew this, but my early life as a reader immersed in pulp stories has put in my heart a hope that the protagonist will beat the bad guy and save the girl. This hope is almost always disappointed. 
  • It is much more like the first part of a saint’s biography (intentionally so, as stated by the Father General at the end)
    • In our hagiographies we forget the saints’ failings, that with few exceptions they were also sinners
      • Even many of the Virgin saints were not free from this abuse; theirs was not a physical virginity but the continence and discipline to choose a discipleship that would surely lead to abuse and martyrdom
    • Fr. Sandoz’s “mistake” was his doubt and outright agnosticism. Even once he felt that the mission was given by God, there seemed to be a hint of pride about the entire enterprise.
      • What happens to him, and the catharsis of his hearing, seem to set him on the track for a good and full relationship with God
    • It is easy to imagine a trajectory for Fr. Sandoz after the events of this novel. A return to faith and eventual sainthood.
      • Fr. Sandoz’s relationship with God is paralleled by the other relationships in the novel.
        • Jimmy’s relationship with Sophia, which goes from a distant infatuation (probably more with an ideal than the real person as these things go), then to a growing knowledge and active courtship, the promise of new life, and then the finality. We are not told details about how Jimmy dies, but Sophia stands between their adopted tribe and predator/soldiers, there is little doubt that Jimmy would have joined her.
        • Anne’s with God, in which she begins to cautiously believe, finding she can lay disaster at the feet of God
        • Sophia herself, whose entire life story mirrors the events of the novel in a way. Going from the victim of abuse in her youth, a child visited with nearly all the brutality of what the Runa face, to distant and guarded, to finally opening up.
      • Perhaps in a matter of years, Fr. Sandoz will return to that planet, like the Jesuit martyr who returned to the New World. If he does so, martyrdom would be likely.
      • Perhaps he will spend time in contemplation back on earth and become a mystic.
      • It seems unlikely after the last chapter that his dark night of the soul will not see light, even if dawn is farther away than it seems.
  • It is possible that subsequent missions from earth will find a general Runa uprising has drastically changed things.
  • Retro Futurism is always fun. Especially since in this case, it originated in my own lifetime.
    • It seems unlikely if the events of the book were to happen today, that serious people would consider an alien species worthy of a religious mission without considering that they may be violent and wicked. Is that a product of its time?
    • It also seems unlikely that a similar work of speculative fiction written today would not delve much more into issues of sex and gender. 

[I have been informed that there is a sequel and some of my predictions may be born out.]