Jack Benham
Physics 120: Life in the Universe
Professor Mariana Lazarova
September 25, 2013
A Modern Family
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, holds true to the Jesuit idea that people find God and love through work. In this novel, a vibrant collection of six people finds family and home in the collaboration of their labors both similar and different. Not one person of the group was raised in the stereotypical orthodox tradition, meaning the usual family composed of a mother and a father and less than about ten children. Yet they form their own modern family. A family with the same dynamics of love, rivalry and confusion any other family experiences. This amalgamation of different men and women create a portrait for the modern family and prove that any stagnant view the vital social structure, we call family, is simply wrong. They prove that the components of family are irrelevant as long as the loving relationships, dynamics and forces that foster the inexplicable love, rivalries, and loyalty shared between kin are preserved.
Familial rivalry courses through our history. In Feudal Europe the children of both royal and serf families engaged in intense battles physical and political to prosper. Sons of royal families often battled each other a chance to succeed their father’s crown. These battles spilled out from the court in the form of duels and assassinations that sometimes involved killing the father for a chance to become king. Children of serf families battled for survival, hoping to just grow up and maybe even become viable and proactive members of their communities. Obviously the intensity of inter family rivalries has dissipated dramatically, but it certainly continues as a muted dynamic in modern families.
Rivalry is not a prevalent dynamic among the six members of this most unusual family as each member of this family appreciate any sort of prolonged companionship and loyalty that they provide to each other. Their lives before they converge on the La Perla Slum of San Juan, Puerto Rico are proof enough for them that they should not take this love for granted.
Father Emilio Sanchez, Anne and George Edwards, Sofia Mendes, Father DW Yarbrough and Jimmy Quinn have nothing in common besides the fact that they grew up or are now currently living unorthodox lives with regards to family. Emilio grew up in La Perla, which as a mentioned above is a slum of San Juan. His family was deeply rooted in the heroin smuggling business. He spends his childhood on the streets, fighting, drinking, and playing baseball. Street fighting leads him to boxing, which leads him to the United States, where he meets Father DW Yarbrough. With the guidance of the Father Superior of the district of New Orleans, Emilio joins decides to become a Jesuit priest. Emilio is brilliant, especially as a linguist. He picks up language quickly and masters it within weeks or months of first hearing it. This linguistic acuity makes him a valuable missionary resource and the Jesuits send him all over the world to work with different cultures.
The man who inspired Emilio to choose a path of piety, DW, is quite an anomaly. He jokingly believes he is not “the work of a serious deity” because “the Good Lord [made him] a Catholic, a liberal, ugly and gay and a fair poet and then had him born in Waco, Texas.”
Sofia Mendes is born in Istanbul, Turkey to Jewish parents whose ancestors were exiled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. She carries their fortitude and stubbornness with her to survive. Also she is incredibly emotionally unavailable, she is “all business”. This seriousness stems from her horrific childhood. Both her parents died in a war when she was young, so she whored her young body out to older men. In her late teenage years one of her clients, a man named Jaubert, offers buy her into indentured servitude. Disgusting by today’s ethics, in the fictional world of The Sparrow this is an opportunity for Sofia to leave her life of prostitution, become educated at the highest level and live a somewhat normal life. Jaubert is a broker, he goes to the worlds worst slums and finds talented young people to educate. In return, people invest in them like a person would invest in a company. If the investments make money Jaubert and the investors make money. Its a simple idea that although repulsive, offers young people living in unthinkable poverty to have a chance to contribute to the world.
Sofia proves incredibly sharp and driven. Consequently, like Emilio, she is also a keen linguist but possesses the flexibility to learn and master any work quickly. Her broker, Jaubert, assigns her to a job in Cleveland. This job entails studying Father Emilio Sandoz’s method for learning languages.
While being the subject of study of Sofia, in Cleveland, Emilio teaches a latin class at a local university. One of his favorite students is an older middle aged women named Anne Edwards who decided to return to school to better understand all the latin terminology that baffled her during her career as a nurse. Emilio begins having dinner with Anne and George, her husband who is a retired technician of some sort. The couple never had kids. Anne’s outgoing hospitality and incredible ability to sympathize with everyone and George’s natural paternal gentleness and sternness make it seem odd they never tried.
Finally, there is Jimmy Quinn. Born in Boston to Irish parents who emigrated from Dublin due to civil unrest, is enormously tall and lanky. His parents divorced when he was a teenager but they made sure he completed his education and he graduated college with a degree in astronomy. Jimmy decides to enter the ultra competitive field of astronomy, a market in which artificial intelligence drastically decreased the need for human resources. Yet, he maintains a job at the Arecibo Radio Telescope in the mountains of Puerto Rico. It is here on this small island of the southern tip of Florida that provides the setting for the formation of this amazing modern family.
Each member is drawn to Puerto Rico through there work or desire to work. Emilio has been assigned to work at a mission in La Perla, and he convinces Anne and George to move down there to spice up their retirement. Anne takes over a medical clinic in La Perla, while George works as a volunteer technician at Arecibo. Sofia Mendes takes another assignment studying the benefits of investing in more artificial intelligence at Arecibo. DW ends up in San Juan to head the exploratory mission to Rakhat after Jimmy discovers their alien radio signals.
Anne, being the eldest women of the group, assumes the mother figure. It comes naturally to her because of her aptness at making people feel comfortable around her and in her home. People trust her and therefore open up to her about their deepest conflicts and insecurities. For example DW is tells her that he is gay. He has never entrusted anyone in his entire life with such information but finds comfort in disclosing it to Anne. DW takes on a sort of fatherly role. His stern and sage demeanor provide security for the entire group and provide a balance to Anne’s friendliness. Together they lead the group emotionally, spiritually, through their expedition. A gay priest and a mother without kids acting as parents is not traditional at all but the components of a certain position can change as long as they provide the same dynamic of guidance and understanding that all good parents do.
George and Jimmy play the roles of the technically minded children who are slightly aloof with regards to emotional matters. Also, Jimmy is incredibly jealous of Emilio because Sofia clearly has feelings for him and none for Jimmy. But Anne’s grace and understanding help Jimmy understand that his predicament does not imply imminent emotional doom for him. Emilio transcends any stereotypical familial role, instead he incorporates all roles into his interactions with the others. He is a spiritual man, a hard worker, a friend to all, but respected and revered by each of them because of his slightly mystical nature. Sofia, being incredibly emotionally unavailable, maintains a certain mysteriousness and disconnectedness from the rest of the group but as she spends more time with them she becomes enthralled in their love and loyalty and slowly allows herself to fully commit to her new family.
A gay priest, another who grew up in the worst slums of Puerto Rico, a couple without children, an indentured servant and a child of divorced parents would have never been accepted in society fifty years ago, maybe not even now. But this portrait of a modern family provides provides hope that in the future all types of families will be accepted and prosper as long as they provide a loving and loyal sanctuary for the members to thrive in.
