The Sparrowhawk Companion (2 page)

by Dina Schein

One would expect a story whose hero is a ten-year-old boy to appeal mostly to children. One would expect a story set in a historic era to appeal mostly to history buffs. Yet
Sparrowhawk Book One: Jack Frake
has a large fan base of all ages—“between early middle school up to retirement”—and of a large span of professions—“there’s no real common denominator in the professions.”
¹
What are the reasons for
Sparrowhawk
’s wide-ranging appeal?

We can find a clue to the answer by looking at how this novel differs from other stories with juvenile heroes. The action of many such stories centers around childhood fantasies; for instance,
Peter Pan
is about three children’s magical flight from the real world into Neverland. Their young characters typically act very much their age by engaging in silly antics. Their concerns largely revolve around issues that are confined to a narrow age group, such as playground games with other kids, trouble with the teacher, or fights with parents over household rules. For these reasons, such stories typically do not hold the interest of adults.

With this in mind, let us look at
Sparrowhawk
’s subject matter. The action in this novel is far from fantastic or childish. Jack Frake, a boy in eighteenth-century England, runs away from home in order to escape being sold into slavery by his mother and her lover. Jack eventually joins a group of men who run a business. They purchase food and other goods from those who produce them, and sell these products to merchants. The British crown imposed high taxes on all merchants’ goods, which in turn caused widespread corruption, the ruining of merchants, starvation of the poor, and frequent executions by hanging for minor offenses. The men of the group that Jack joins smuggle in goods and avoid the taxes, thus making it possible for the common people to afford necessities. For this, the smugglers are branded as outlaws and relentlessly hunted to be hanged.

The life of
Sparrowhawk
’s young hero is dissimilar to the one that most children today experience. Nor does Jack behave in the way that most children do. Most children today are supported by their parents and enjoy many hours of leisure. Jack is on his own from age ten, supporting himself by working in a tavern and rooming house from dawn until night. As we follow him through that period of his life, we see that these activities, far from stealing his childhood and committing him to a backbreaking life of drudgery, make his life exciting and are a major source of his developing knowledge. Ask most children today to name what they like to do; typical answers would be things like playing video games and hanging out at the mall. Most prefer recess to class. Jack thirsts after knowledge, paying out his hard-earned shillings and pennies for an education. The responsibilities of most children today are confined to such chores as taking out the garbage and feeding the family pet. Jack participates in nighttime smuggling trips, rowing a boat through stormy sea waters, and carting boxes all night long. Between such trips he stands on guard duty. We are shown that it is Jack’s unusual childhood and his exposure to the men who are his comrades in danger that serve to develop his moral character and help him mature to healthy manhood.

Jack is more mature than today’s children—and quite a few adults.
Sparrowhawk
examines serious issues, such as the right to free trade and, more broadly, the proper purpose of government. It is this novel’s important themes and mature characters that captivate adult readers.

Why then does
Sparrowhawk
Book One
appeal to children as much as it does to adults? Issues like free trade are remote from children’s knowledge and interests. Further, the novel’s action takes place centuries ago and in another country, a time and place too removed from most of today’s American children’s experiences and concerns. Its hero Jack is also substantially unlike them.

Because the novel presents its serious and complex messages in the form of an exciting, suspenseful adventure story. A young reader can experience the excitement of living in hiding with a group of smugglers and evading their corrupt pursuers. He can watch Jack and one of the smugglers, who serves as Jack’s friendly much older brother, successfully defend themselves and a group of others at gunpoint when their coach is stopped by armed robbers. He can accompany Jack on his first trip to much-longed-for London. He can enjoy the respect the young Jack gets from men substantially his senior, as they treat him like a man, and he can see that Jack deserves it. A young reader can learn the real meaning of brotherhood and experience the pleasure of watching morally excellent persons. A reader, young or older, can be inspired by the actions of true heroes and imagine that he is one of them.

Even though
Sparrowhawk
’s main character is a child, and even though its story is set a few centuries ago, the ideas that motivate Jack Frake and the novel are just as important for an adult and for current times. We do not live in the eighteenth century, and most of us have never dealt with smugglers. Yet the novel deals with such questions as: “Should I fight for what is right in the face of opposition—or is it better to be a docile conformist?” (The novel accepts the first of these and rejects the second.) “Is it possible to be a heroic individual or does each of us have inescapable pockets of corruption in his or her moral character?” (The novel accepts the former and rejects the latter.) If the former is true, “What should I do to become an excellent person?” (The novel shows us.) All of us—adults and children alike—confront these questions in some way in our own lives. Their answers are of great practical concern.

The novel that tells the story of the young Jack Frake is the beginning of a larger series in which Edward Cline shows the kind of ideas that were responsible for the American Revolution. Instead of presenting us with today’s uninspiring politicians,
Sparrowhawk
transports us to a world of men like Patrick Henry—and the ideas that made him and others like him possible. It is the defense and preservation of that American character that is the true meaning of patriotism. One feels that the country whose embryonic state we are shown in
Sparrowhawk
is worth fighting for. I hope that this novel inspires many to fight for the same nation and vision.

by Jena Trammell

Edward Cline’s
Sparrowhawk
is an unprecedented literary epic dramatizing the intellectual and political origins of the United States. At the center of the epic is the story of two heroic men, Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick, American colonials who recognize that any compromise with British tyranny will destroy American liberties.
Books One
and
Two
of
Sparrowhawk
tell the coming-of-age stories of Cline’s youthful heroes in eighteenth–century England. In
Book Three
, Jack and Hugh meet for the first time as young landowners in Queen Anne County, Virginia, in 1759. As their characters evolve, their relationship deepens and sustains the story’s plotline and thematic development through the remaining novels. Closely allied in spirit and in their moral convictions, Jack and Hugh part ways only over the strategies necessary to rebuff British authority and preserve American freedoms. Through their portrayals, Cline offers readers a rare experience in modern literature: the thrilling emotional and inspirational experience of understanding historical events through the ideas and actions of morally heroic men.

Cline has stated that one of his central purposes in creating
Sparrowhawk
was to show the caliber of men who made the American Revolution possible. Such a caliber of men has rarely been shown in American literature. American novels have traditionally depicted anti-heroes, alienated characters who moodily reject or are rejected by society,
characters of ill fortune and fate. In modern fiction, popular characters are often “good” detectives or spies who rescue society from inarguably evil criminals and terrorists. With rare exception have American writers dramatized the moral conflicts of distinguished men and women acting purposefully to achieve lives of intellectual and productive accomplishment. In short, the overall body of American literature does not reflect the reality of our nation’s history, nor does it reflect the values of most Americans since the eighteenth century.

Why do we read literature? Because men and women naturally want to know and understand the world and to live meaningful lives. Literary art is a means of experiencing various human values, played out in the actions of characters, and the practical results of those values. Despite a dominant message in American literature that man is helplessly controlled by outside forces and circumstances, the history of the United States has abundant evidence to prove that man has free will to choose his values, to act on his values, to achieve his goals, and to find happiness in life. In dramatizing events in the pre-Revolutionary years,
Sparrowhawk
helps readers see clearly that the origin of the first moral political system based on individual rights was no chance accident, but the product of men who believed and acted upon the moral principles of freedom and of each person’s right to his own life. This is the inspirational heroism that comes alive in the characters of Jack and Hugh (and other characters) in
Sparrowhawk.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed literature as more valuable than history due to literature’s emphasis on universal truths, rather than just particular facts. Aristotle stated that the literary author must represent men’s actions, whether real or imagined, in “accordance with the laws of possibility and probability.” While history tells us what a particular person did or what happened to him, literature can explore the underlying motivations of human actions that lead to particular consequences.
¹
Following the Aristotelian formula, the emotional and inspirational value of
Sparrowhawk
spring from its perfect integration of the story’s intellectual themes with its dramatic, suspenseful plot. Cline’s heroes are portrayed as men who honor truth and justice and select their values consciously through a careful process of reasoning. Confidence
in their moral values helps them live courageously, meeting each new conflict by demonstrating loyalty to their values.

As heroes embodying tremendous rational and practical virtues, the characters of Jack and Hugh are anything but one-sided and unconvincing. Cline gives them a convincing human reality by emphasizing how they apply their values fully to their lives, while avoiding the common tendency of authors to humanize characters by inventing flaws for them. Aristotle spoke of the device of recognitions in plot development, and the first meeting between Jack and Hugh in
Book Three
includes a significant moment of the recognition of shared values. In their first conversation, Hugh tells Jack that he has read
Hyperborea
, the novel penned by Jack’s friend and mentor Redmagne and copied out by Jack himself as a boy. Jack is simply astonished by the revelation. Riding home, he is touched by a new feeling:

In this touch of characterization, the novel emphasizes the consciousness of the hero in regard to his values, preferring solitude to relationships devoid of common values. Later the novel revisits this theme:

Friendship is both a recognition and a choice for Jack and Hugh, whose volitional consciousness extends to every area of their lives. As the story line advances, Hugh Kenrick is portrayed as a man who genuinely prefers life in a free and more just society to his former, privileged life as an aristocrat in England. He is active in the management of his estate and active in politics, winning a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Unconvinced of Jack’s position on the inevitability of war between the colonies and Britain, Hugh has faith in the power of reason to alleviate and overcome hostilities with Parliament. Reason alone, he believes, will persuade the British of the morality and justice of American independence united in political alliance with England. Hugh’s powerful speeches in the House of Burgesses help speed the Virginia Resolves along to passage despite heavy resistance, aiding Hugh’s conviction that men who know reason will act in accordance with it. As he declares in one rousing speech, “Moral certitude is a virtue itself, and in this instance is a glorious one, because it asserts and affirms, in all those charters and resolves, our natural liberty and the blessings it bestows upon us!”

Hugh’s main mistake can be interpreted as the honest error of an honest man. Hugh properly understands the motivational power of ideas in the lives of men and the critical need to defend moral principles. For example, in
Book Four
, when Reece Vishonn complains of confusion over the ideas of political philosophers and states his desire for “a politics that will spare us the tiresome, pothering complexities of philosophers,” Hugh responds, “That, sir, is neither possible nor advisable. Not possible, for we are, for better or worse, heirs to their work. Not advisable,
for then the encroachment of stamps and bayonets will always seem a mystery to us.” While moral and political philosophy can indeed help the colonials understand the enemy’s motivation and anticipate its response, Hugh’s error is to believe that other men, when confronted with reason, will be honest and as willing to accept the truth as he is.