The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

First published: New York: Villard Books, 1996

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Science fiction

Core issue(s): Catholics and Catholicism; clerical life; conscience; faith; good vs. evil; problem of evil; suffering

Principal characters

• Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit, the sole survivor of a mission to the planet Rakhat
• Sofia Mendes, and
• Jimmy Quinn, scientists on the mission
• Anne Edwards, and
• George Edwards, husband-and-wife team of scientists on the mission
• D. W. Yarborough, the Jesuit leader of the mission to Rakhat
• Marc Robichaux, a Jesuit crewmember
• Vincenzo Giuliani, the father general of the Society of Jesus
• John Candotti, Giuliani’s secretary
• Johannes Voelker,
• Edward Behr, and
• Felipe Reyes, Jesuits investigating the aftermath of the mission to Rakhat
• Askama, a young Runa, one of Rakhat’s sentient races
• Supaari VaGayjur, a wealthy merchant, a Jana’ata, the planet’s other sentient species
• Hlavin Kitheri, a nobleman-poet of the Jana’ata

Overview

In The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell employs a plot convention dear to science fiction and fantasy writers for more than a century—that of humankind’s first encounter with an extraterrestrial race—to explore a lengthy roster of Christian issues and concerns: innocence and corruption; the role God does or does not play when things go horribly wrong for humanity; sex, birth control, and procreation; suffering; and confession.

Russell’s narrative hops back and forth between the present (2059-2060) and the past (roughly 2019-2040). As the novel opens, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) is beginning an investigation into what went wrong with a mission sponsored by their order to Rakhat, an Earthlike planet recently discovered in the Alpha Centauri system, one technically advanced enough to send out radio transmissions of music, beautiful songs that delight all who hear them. The team of eight explorers consists of four Jesuits and four scientists from different backgrounds. A year after landfall, transmissions from Rakhat to Earth end. The Jesuits send a rescue mission, and these men learn that all the original explorers are dead except for the Jesuit linguist, Father Emilio Sandoz, who is found seemingly working as a prostitute. Furthermore, when the rescue team finds him, Sandoz kills the Rakhati child who led the humans to him. When this news reaches Earth, an international scandal ensues, and the father general of the Jesuits convenes a group of priests to question Sandoz and to piece together why the expedition went so horribly wrong.

Among the investigators is Father Johannes Voelker, who bitterly denounces Sandoz as a whore and a child murderer. Sandoz’s account is as follows:

Upon reaching Rakhat, the Earthlings soon make contact with a race of sentient humanoids: the Runa, herbivores who partake somewhat of both simian and canine attributes and who are pastoral traders. The humans repeatedly fail to grasp essential differences between themselves and the Runa. For example, the Earthlings assume that the largest Runa are males and the smaller are females, when the opposite is true. Likewise, the humans have trouble grasping the grammar of the Runa language, for its gender system is based not on sex but on whether the noun referred to is visible or invisible.

These misunderstandings multiply when the crew meets Supaari VaGayjur, a merchant from a nearby city who trades with the Runa but who is a member of Rakhat’s other sentient race, the Jana’ata, carnivorous, catlike creatures. It is the Jana’ata who produce the radio transmissions that first attracted the notice of Earth. Having grown somewhat bored with the gentle, unprepossessing Runa, Fathers Sandoz, Marc Robichaux, and D. W. Yarborough wrangle an invitation from Supaari to visit his city of Gayjur. In Gayjur, Sandoz senses that Supaari is being less than open with them: He keeps them out of sight of other Jana’ata and is primarily interested in making trade agreements with them to secure the rights to goods and supplies they brought from Earth. Sandoz is especially haunted by a brief scene he glimpses of three Runa seemingly being executed by the Jana’ata. On their return, the three priests are saddened to learn that scientists Jimmy Quinn and George Edwards have been murdered by poachers while tending the gardens that they had helped the Runa plant.

These deaths are the harbingers of the onslaught of horrors that conclude the novel. The Earthlings have noticed that the birth rate has soared among the Runa but do not realize that this is because of the richer diet provided by the gardens that the humans have taught them to cultivate. One day, Jana’ata soldiers arrive without warning and slaughter the Runa newborn—and prepare them as food. The two races are revealed as intertwined carnivores and herbivores, both of whom have evolved into sentient beings without ever having disengaged themselves from their original relationship of predator and prey. Sofia Mendes tries to rally the Runa to resistance, crying “They are few; we are many,” and in the resultant melee, all the humans are killed except for Sandoz and Robichaux, who are taken as prisoners to Gayjur. There Supaari tries to protect them by subjecting them to what is, for the catlike Jana’ata, a declawing operation. He does this because, in his culture, declawed individuals cannot hunt and therefore can be given refuge by any member of society willing to take them in. Supaari, not understanding human biology, does not realize that he is torturing the Earthlings. Robichaux dies from this operation, and Sandoz is left with grotesquely mutilated hands. Soon, Supaari, to earn the right to marry and procreate in his society, where population growth is rigorously controlled, betrays Sandoz, giving him to the aristocrat-poet Hlavin Kitheri to be a sex slave. After months of debasing sexual assaults, the priest decides to make a break for freedom by killing the next guard who opens his cell door. Unfortunately, the next person through the door is the Runa child, Askama, whom he had earlier befriended, arriving with the rescue mission from Earth.

The novel ends in a powerful sequence in which the father general of the Jesuits demands that Sandoz tell the committee of inquiry everything about his imprisonment and rape on Rakhat, holding nothing back, moving even the skeptical and sardonic Father Voelker to compassion.

Christian Themes

Russell’s major theme is the inexplicability of suffering and torment, especially that of those who trust in God and, from a specifically Christian standpoint, seek to propagate the faith. Each of the Earthlings is good-hearted and well-meaning, and Sandoz has been called a saint, a favorite of God; nevertheless, all die or suffer abominably or both. However, Russell steers clear of offering an easy explanation, though she explores a number of possibilities: suffering as a test of faith, sorrow as a conduit to closeness with the deity, the necessity of God’s absence to give humans space to exist as free beings. The most challenging possibility surfaces in a conversation between Fathers Giuliani and Reyes in the final chapter. Giuliani insists that God cares for his children, citing Matthew 10:29, the famous verse about God noting even the fall of a sparrow. Reyes points out God notes the sparrow’s calamity but wonders whether he merely observes. Does he care about the fall? This question brings up a possibility hinted at throughout the novel in the failure of the crew to understand the alien races they encounter: Perhaps God is so different, so essentially alien in comparison with humanity, that humans cannot perceive his actions and reactions, much less grasp his motives.

Another Christian theme expressed passionately in The Sparrow is the call to withhold judgment as found in Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” The media as well as Sandoz’s own order are quick to express disgust at his apparent lapse into carnality and child murder. Yet, by the novel’s end, readers know that Sandoz is truly innocent: He fought his imprisonment and molestation, and the death of Askama was a tragic accident during a justifiable attempt at freedom.

Sources for Further Study

Hyland, Sabine. The Jesuit and the Incas. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Provides a worthwhile contrast between Russell’s interplanetary Jesuit mission and an actual one to the Incas, who may have partly inspired Russell’s Runa—a word sometimes used for speakers of the modern Incan tongue.

Pearl, Nancy. Review of The Sparrow. Library Journal 126, no. 9 (May 15, 2001): 192-193. Reviewer calls the work a philosophical novel rather than a work of science fiction as it centers on the question of what good and evil are.

Russell, Mary Doria. Children of God. New York: Ballantine, 1998. Russell’s sequel/completion of The Sparrow. Less engaging than the original, but it provides a satisfying end to the story as well as exploring new religious themes.

Stableford, Brian. “Religion.” In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nichols. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Thorough examination of the treatment of religion in science fiction prior to Russell.