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.
Rivalry is not a prevalent dynamic among the six members of this most unusual family because of their generally destitute childhoods and lack of family. 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 in or are now currently living in unorthodox lives with regards to family. Emilio grew up in La Perla, which, as 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 to 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..
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.
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. 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, Jimmy 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. 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 their 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, therefore they 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. Anne creates an accepting dynamic that holds the group together. DW takes on a fatherly role. His stern and sage demeanor provides security for the entire group complimenting Anne’s friendliness. Together they lead the group emotionally and spiritually through the expedition. A gay priest and a mother without kids acting as parents is not traditional. 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. Russell uses them as compliments to Anne and DW who are more emotionally adept. George thrives during the planning of the expedition and when he is operating the asteroid. In emotional times he fades and Russell shifts attention from him to the sympathetic and spiritual Anne or Emilio or DW. The only friction in the family arises from Jimmy’s enchantment with Sofia and her disinterest with him in return. Jimmy is hopelessly in love with Sofia. Having a crush on a fellow family member is taboo in our culture and in nature, Jimmy’s obsession with sofia is natural because they are not related. Despite the lack of relation any physical intimacy between these family members, beyond the intimacy between Anne and George, would be unnatural and detrimental to the preservation of their companionship. To the emotionally attune, Sofia fosters a hidden love for Emilio. In return, Emilio possesses similar intimacies for Sofia. His priesthood its consequence of celibacy prohibit any physically intimate relationship with others. Inter family relationship dynamics are rare and taboo in our culture but are natural and expected in this modern family because of their hereditary distinctness. Anne’s grace and understanding help Jimmy understand that his predicament does not imply imminent emotional doom. In preserving Jimmy’s emotional sanity, she preserves professionalism that is crucial for the expedition’s and the family’s success.
Sofia, is incredibly emotionally unavailable maintaining a certain mysteriousness and disconnectedness from the rest of the group. 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. Sofia even develops hidden feelings for Emilio that ironically she must quash to preserve his vow of abstinence and the family. This is another example of a cultural taboo that manifests itself in this family but because of their unique situation it is natural. Sofia, along with Jimmy and George, fills the role of a brilliant child who is guided emotionally by Anne and intellectually by Emilio.
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 mystical nature. Even though he is not the assigned leader of the expedition, Emilio is the spiritual and linguistic leader of the family. His incredible abilities with language make him the main connection between the family and the Runa. Emilio assumes an all encompassing role in the family. He is stern and compassionate. He is technical and creative. He is a sage and a child. He is submissive and assertive. He possesses an ethereal compassion for all beings and a sublime devotion to God, which makes his peers suggest he is a saint.
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. This portrait of a modern family 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.
