Substantive: Children of God

Am I the only one who thinks there was something oddly touching about the way Supaari saved his daughter? And at the same time slightly troubling. I understand that, in a peculiar way, the circumstances of what happened to Emilio were the result of miscommunication (I can see how telling him that celibacy means "serving everyone" could be misinterpreted) but a society that treats other sentient beings as a form of cattle have a fundamentally different way of looking at things than we do. Or perhaps not. I suppose what I'm saying is that, by having sold Emilio into sex slavery, whether or not Supaari knew what he was, the Jana'ata was doing something that, by our standards, is morally wrong. They thrive (or at least Hlavin thrives) on Emilio's suffering.

So it confuses me that a child conceived in what is essentially an act of rape is the focus of Supaari's own peculiar form of redemption. It was an unhappy marriage and, at the beginning at least, Supaari seemed content with that, but when he sees Ha'anala, it's like everything changes. He essentially becomes a traitor to his own race. Not to mention how horrifying it is that the Runa not only take him in but volunteer to sustain him by sacrificing themselves for his nourishment. I understand that it's an act of kindness but frankly it's baffling to me.

Also: poor Emilio. We give him the opportunity for a real, lasting happiness--exempt from the struggles of his own faith, content to live a decent life, and then it's taken away from him. That moment when Gina comes back and Emilio's disappeared made me want to cry, because I knew that a) he was going back to Rakhat and b) he didn't want to. He's not Christ and, what's more, he's not an emblem for the redemption of the Society of Jesus.