Ignorance and Pure Dumb Luck

During our class discussion of Eifelheim, the question was raised: Why did this encounter between humans and aliens progress more peacefully and happily than most of the others we've read about this semester? In light of this, it hit me that perhaps it was because of the nature of the time and place in which the Krenken found themselves. In my opinion, the Krenken and the humans were able to get along relatively well because of the fact that the humans were unaware of the true implications of the existence of the Krenken. Most of the characters in the book believe that the Krenken are either demons or foreigners--they do not truly grasp the fact that they came from another planet. The very concept of other planets did not exist during this time period; even educated individuals from the Middle Ages believed that the heavens were a sphere that surrounded the Earth and moved around it. For this reason, the idea of aliens was not really comprehendible. And maybe this is the real reason that the humans more or less accepted the Krenken--they didn't have it in their natures to expect anything different from these strange beings.

As Andrew puts it in his blog post, "maybe there's something to that kind of innocence, or even ignorance." Andrew presents a really interesting view by comparing the humans in Eifelheim with the Runa in The Sparrow. Both are ignorant in some way because they do not recognize the new outsiders as truly alien and therefore don't "realize the full extent of [their] 'alien-ness' (Andrew's post). But, as Andrew points out, the lack of understanding that both the Runa and the 14th century Germans experience could easily go the other way and end miserably. Although I don't really like it, Andrew's idea that most things depend on chance is probably right. It all comes back to the idea of chance versus freewill. Do events play out according to our actions or do they happen in spite of our actions? This question relates back to Emilio's question of why The Sparrow ended the way it did. Was it because of something he did or was it all part of something out of his control? In Eifelhiem at least, it seems that the encounter ended successfully because the aliens just happened to land in that specific time and place.