Hannah Dickens

HON 394
O'Flaherty
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is the story of a futuristic alternate reality
and focuses on one Jesuit priest's journey and consequences of first contact with aliens.
Though the story is told mostly from Jesuits' viewpoints, the role of religion and the
divine in the world outside the Jesuits is not one of respect for a bigger than life force but
rather as just another tool or business to use and interact with.
Sofia Mendes's job and first connection to Emilio Sandoz and also Jimmy Quinn
highlights the lack of difference perceived between religious and secular groups in the
world of The Sparrow. Sofia's job is to learn people's jobs or skills and rewrite them to be
more efficient for an Artificial Intelligence program to hold all together. Sofia is
introduced in detail for the first time when she interviews Emilio for his language skills
due to traveling with the Jesuit ministry. Afterwards, she must immediately move on to
the next job. "'Where will you go next?' he asked, still stunned. 'The U.S. Army War
College. A military history professor is retiring. Good-bye, Dr. Sandoz.'" (Russell, 42)
And some time and jobs after that military professor, Sofia also works with Jimmy Quinn
and his job at Arecibo with the Japanese. Sofia and her entire career sees no difference
between religious information and otherwise, it is all just different skills and jobs to be
understood, broken down, and formed in a more efficient and accessible way.
When first contact was made, the question to be answered is how to respond and
who is going to respond. The Jesuits have no special standing either for or against being

the ones to respond to the otherworldly message, they were just another private special
interest trying to tackle a huge question of intelligent life on another world. "The United
Nations required years to come to the decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten
days. In New York, diplomats debated long and hard, with many recesses and tablings of
the issue, whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to contact
that world that would become known as Rakhat when there were so many pressing needs
on Earth. In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission
could be attempted and whom to send." (Russell, 3) It was the Japanese company Arecibo
that first received the alien singing and recognized it for what it was, and the United
Nations were discussing the ramifications of expedition, meaning that each country
individually had to find out what they thought, and then the Jesuits of course who ended
up sending the groups. These are the only groups spoken about directly, but they
represent bigger types of organizations that probably had a lot of other groups just like
these discussing the same issue. The Japanese company is a business, the UN is a
government program, and the Jesuits represent religious groups, and all of these types of
groups have a lot of individual things that make them up all around the world, which
makes it difficult to believe that only these three groups were discussing this complex
question. Out of all of the groups and people thinking about the question of expedition
and first contact and aliens, the Jesuits had no special standing to be seen as experts in the
question but were just another group like all the other businesses and governments.
Religion is also perceived as being a storytelling device used to promote a certain
way of life and structure, not only on Earth but also on Rakhat. The social and economic
structure on Rahkat is that the Jana'ata are above the Runa, and within the Jana'ata, only

the first two males can reproduce and hold specific positions within society. Supaari tells
the legend of the first five Jana'ata hunters and the first five Runa herds on the island of
Ingwy and how it took six tries to figure out a way to sustain life, which was for the
Jana'ata to rule over the Runa. "Who knew? Maybe there was some truth in it all, but
Supaari was a skeptic. The Ingwy Cycle was too pat an explanation for duogeniture, too
convenient for the firsts and seconds justifying their grip on the world." (Russell, 340).
Those with money and power have every reason to do everything to hold onto their
positions and religion, just like politics and resources, is just another tool to use to
convince others to hold the status quo.
The role of religion in the secular world of The Sparrow is simply as another tool
to help explain or control or trade, not as something outside of human possibility as the
Jesuits internally believed of God. Religious groups were held in regard like any other
business or government group when it came to the world, and they used the tools and
people they had and were used just the same.