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So I just finished The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell.
I don't think I liked it very much, but I did finish it because I wanted to find out how it ended or how it resolved.
I don't think I liked it very much, but I did finish it because I wanted to find out how it ended or how it resolved.
This book unfolds very slowly; you're told at the beginning that the protagonist is the only survivor of a failed mission to an alien world, and then the rest of the book introduces you to the doomed characters and eventually gets around to how they die.
It does keep you reading, because as a reader you are curious to see how things fall out.
There are some interesting parallels to the true history of some Christian/Catholic missionaries in the past. To be sure, in the end most indigenous cultures suffered and died horribly for their meeting with the European colonizers, but there are stories of individual priests who were tortured and killed horribly in the name of spreading the word of God to various savage tribes. The fate of the the main character does echo these historical accounts very admirably. And, as I'm sure one does, a person of faith would find their relationship to their God tested and perhaps abolished by such suffering in His name. Martyrs and saints find meaning in their suffering by saying they are doing it 'for god' or in witness of god's glory, or to echo the suffering and death of their main god-figure, Jesus Christ.
In the end, it speaks to all humans' struggle to find meaning and purpose in the cruelty and suffering they experience in trying to live their lives and be good people... is it better because God willed it and/or let it happen? Or is that worse, to know that an omnibenevolent, omnipotent being saw them suffering and didn't do anything to stop it? Or is it more bearable to cease belief in such a being and just resign oneself to the idea that stuff happens, often for no reason, and beings suffer and die to no greater purpose or spiritual glory? It's a good question and worth considering.
I also found a kind of satisfaction in seeing the Eden myth almost turned on its head; in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, humans were given a perfect garden and commanded to be its stewards. They broke a rule and were expelled from the garden. In this book, the creation of gardens, the intentional cultivation of food, breaks the social order of the peaceful and pleasant world the humans find and may ultimately end that civilization completely, bringing the human condition of poverty, homelessness, starvation, overpopulation, etc. to beings who had already solved those problems--perhaps in a brutal way, but again, this brings into question the meaning of suffering and death. Is widespread planetary suffering to no purpose other than some invisible being's 'glory' and 'will' better or worse than a planet in balance, enforced and controlled by the predatory dominant species of the planet? What suffering and death is acceptable, what is unacceptable, and who decides?
It was a slow slog to bring the past and present threads together, and the ending was ultimately unsatisfying, but these thoughts and questions sparked by the reading will stick with me for a while.
