Spoilers The Never Ending Sacrifice - Review Thread
- Thread starter Idoliside
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Sorry for the massive necro-ing...but i've just finally started this book and i'm loving it. I was spurred on to read it because of my recent Una/Cardassia-read through, and this was something that I was "saving". I'm glad I've gotten into it. Her tales of Cardassia have been keeping me riveted. I just wish that I could finally find a copy of AJR's A Stitch in Time in order to make the whole Cardassia read-through complete. Oh well. I'm sure I'll find it someday.
ps- I'm aware that I could probably get an ebook version. No need to stop in to tell me what I already know. I don't need an ebook push
ps- I'm aware that I could probably get an ebook version. No need to stop in to tell me what I already know. I don't need an ebook push
A commentary that this remains my introduction to Dr. Una McCormack and I have never read a bad book by her or something that I considered less than fantastic. Though I was actually revisiting Rugal's story and I have to say it's interesting how my opinion on the subject has changed. Originally, I was very much about the belief that Sisko shouldn't have returned the boy to his father and his adoptive parents were the ones that had the legal "right."
However, as a much older man, I note that Rugal was kidnapped from his family and abandoned by Bajor. Sisko would be essentially condoning the kidnapping (by Dukat) after the fact by letting him stay. Which is interesting because Doctor McCormack seems to think he should have stayed with the Bajoran family.
Mind you, we the audience are inclined to think of him being "returned" to his family as also equivalent to being returned to an authoritarian dictatorship too.
However, as a much older man, I note that Rugal was kidnapped from his family and abandoned by Bajor. Sisko would be essentially condoning the kidnapping (by Dukat) after the fact by letting him stay. Which is interesting because Doctor McCormack seems to think he should have stayed with the Bajoran family.
Mind you, we the audience are inclined to think of him being "returned" to his family as also equivalent to being returned to an authoritarian dictatorship too.
I don't see that. I mean, if someone adopted a baby whose parents were murdered, letting them keep the child wouldn't be condoning the murder. It's not about what happened years ago, it's about the child's state of mind in the present and the future. The only parents Rugal ever knew were his Bajoran parents, so forcing him to leave them to satisfy the demands of someone who's a complete stranger to him is only going to traumatize him, not help him. It's sacrificing the child's well-being to give the father what he wants, and that's doing it backward. It's treating Rugal as a piece of property, not as a person.
Yes, but if said parents showed up alive then I would absolutely think that they should have the child returned to them.
It's interesting to compare the story to the "Suddenly Human" storyline where a man carries out a murder and kidnapping but is allowed to continue to indoctrinate the child in the culture that carried out the murder. Picard's actions there are also treated as accurate but is retroactively justifying the attack.
And the child's own feelings and psychological health don't matter? The child is just an object, a piece of property belonging to the birth parents, no matter how much it traumatizes the child?
That's twisting it. That's exactly the situation I described, where the parents were killed in a war. Jono's father found him orphaned after the battle and adopted him to save his life, no different from the American soldiers who adopted Japanese war orphans after WWII. Talarian culture was the only one he'd ever known, and Picard correctly recognized at the end of the episode that forcing him to abandon it would have only harmed him. They got it right there; they got it horribly wrong with Rugal in DS9.
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