L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light and the Time Cycle
Usually one of the first things I do when I get home is settle down with some of my favorite books from childhood. This time around I went for Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light, because I caught a really, really bad Disney version of it on cable recently (starring The O.C.'s Mischa Barton as Vicky Austin, GAH!) and I needed to scrub out my brain. Thankfully, I missed the recent movie version of A Wrinkle in Time.
Ring was always one of my favorites of L'Engle's because I identified more with Vicky than with Meg Murry. Vicky was an aspiring writer rather than a whiz at numbers, and she lived in a world that wasn't affected by Mrs. Whatsits and cherubims, but rather by a handful of interesting, well-read and life-experienced human beings. I wanted Vicky's life more: communing with dolphins, traveling around the country (in The Moon by Night), dealing with boys like Zachary Gray and Adam Eddington. Not that Calvin O'Keefe wasn't a crush object or anything, but as I'll discuss below, the characters of Wrinkle always felt very distant to me (less so in the companion novels).
Ring deals with death and mortality. Vicky's grandfather is dying, a family friend is buried at the beginning of the book, Zachary's mother has recently passed away, Adam Eddington was in part responsible for someone else's death (The Arm of the Starfish), a dolphin baby dies, and at the end of the book, Vicky is forced to witness, literally at close hand, the death of a small child.
It's a coming-of-age story, a story about a transformative summer, a story with some elements of the fantastic (especially in the dolphin storyline) but on the whole, a story grounded in reality. Vicky's oversensitive and still very young, and the shock and sadness of the ending affect me every time because those feelings are real, tangible. Never mind L'Engle's stream-of-consciousness prose in the last few pages, which sometimes does and doesn't work in her books. What matters is the pain that reaches past the written word, that sense of the human capacity -- and necessity -- to endure such pain, or all else is meaningless.
I like the follow-up, Troubling a Star, much less, because it's more of an action/caper story while not having nearly as much to say as Starfish. And also, there was both too much and not enough Adam/Vicky.
*
After I reread Ring I skimmed through A Wrinkle in Time. I confess that this has never been one of my favorite novels. I have read it many times. I can quote passages verbatim. I can see how it's influenced my writing and reading preferences and even perhaps how it helped kick off my initial interest in science. But I've never actually liked it.
It's a deeply weird book, in many ways, full of cosmic and theological struggle and space travel. It's also a hard introduction to the major characters, none of whom speak and act like any children I ever knew. They're not meant to, of course, special and higher-purposed as they are, but I'm not inspired to care about Meg or Charles Wallace in the way I cared about them in A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They're made to be oddballs, like plenty of other protagonists in YA fiction, but to me, they're oddballs made up of superficial quirks and quotations and random facts, rather than oddballs I want to get to know. (This, by the way, is much the same reason I disliked Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.)
So what we're left with, then, is the story. I do like the story. I like cosmic struggles between good and evil, however binary. But I wonder if all the people who weighed in on elynross's discussions of C.S. Lewis's religious themes in the Narnia series have similar opinions about L'Engle's. Even in Wrinkle they're very much present -- albeit in a more straightforward way, i.e. when L'Engle says He, it's obvious she means God/Jesus and there isn't any "Aslan" to confuse people. Although I think you could read Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which as angels as much as former stars, especially if you factor in Proginoskes the cherubim from Wind and the oddly-materializing seraphim and nephilim from Many Waters (and even Calvin, at the end of the "Aunt Beast" chapter, describes them as "guardian angels" and "Messengers of God").
L'Engle's universe is one in which light and dark originally were in harmony, until the first enemy, the Echthros, desired all the power and glory for itself (read: Satan, described as "He" in Planet, "All Heaven with its power"). The first Echthros turned its back on the light and embraced the dark, and since then it's been a war for balance, where every being has the ability to affect everything else, and thus every being is vital to the struggle, however small. The Echthroi can be a "Black Thing" over planets like Earth and Camazotz (Wrinkle), can destroy matter and lead others into temptation (Wind), influence the course of history (Planet), and take the form of fallen angels (mostly Waters, but also Wind, "The First Test").
*
Everything I would want to say about A Wind in the Door I said previously here [original site is now down; see text reproduced below]. It's my favorite of the cycle, a book I think is superior to Wrinkle in terms of both characterization and thematic development.
ETA: text reproduced below
My favorite character in "A Wind in the Door" is Mr. Jenkins. Sometimes, of course, it's Proginoskes, because he has both the wisdom of an interstellar creature and the naivete of a student still learning how to learn. And because he's just so darn cool. [...] However, I think Mr. Jenkins is the one who most embodies the vision of the book, even more so than Meg. He encapsulates the idea that people can live entire lifetimes without ever truly knowing a sense of purpose (and by extension, their own identity) but that with love one can be Named, and become a pivotal figure in the war between good and evil.
I must note, however, that in "A Wind in the Door" everyone is a pivotal figure, even down to the tiny farandolae in your mitochondria. Madeleine L'Engle makes particular theological and moral assumptions in her books that I think can be off-putting to people who are extreme religious fundamentalists or extreme atheists (hence the reason "A Wrinkle in Time" was once attacked as anti-Christian). L'Engle's protagonists believe -- or come to believe -- in the overwhelming power of love to defeat hatred and evil, the goodness of God, the existence of a pattern in the universe in which everyone has a place and a role to fill.
For that last item, I have to stress it's not exactly destiny or fate she's writing about -- it's the fulfillment of one's potential. This is the key theme of "Wind," and it's more explicitly realized than in "Wrinkle." Both books have turning points at Meg's realizations that her love has the power to save Charles Wallace -- in "Wrinkle" through love of Charles Wallace himself, in Wind" through love and Naming of Mr. Jenkins, the wayward farandolae, and ultimately the Etchthroi. However, what is more clearly delineated in "Wind" is the pattern of normal growth and development and the necessary discovery of one's cosmic identity. The farandolae must put down roots and become farae, Charles Wallace must learn to adjust to public school, people must become Teachers or Namers, or must be Named in order to know who they really are. That kind of dialogue isn't really present in "Wrinkle," although the sense of Meg and Charles Wallace's potentials as warriors of good is still very much present.
When I say that "A Wind in the Door" resonates more with me than "A Wrinkle in Time," I don't really mean that I believe there's a set role for me to fulfill in life. It may sound limiting to be Named -- only a hop away from labeling, one might think-- but Progo equates Naming with loving. And for L'Engle, love is action rather than feeling. Progo says, "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do." Further, it is an affirmation of others' selfhood and is unconditional. To Name something is to help it be "more particularly the particular" thing it is supposed to be. To Name someone is to make him more him, who he is and who he is meant to be. This belief in patterns and potential empowers its characters rather than limits them. Adaptation to one's surroundings and expectations is necessary, but one must still retain essential individual qualities because these are the things that make you who you are, that make you Name-able.
In "Wind" we have an elementary school principal who lives a dry, thankless existence and is hated by nearly everyone he knows. He has a core of goodness inside, sometimes bubbling to the surface (see the story of Calvin's shoes) but for the most part it's deeply hidden. We have a girl who's always seen herself as ugly and inferior to her peers, a cherubim (singular, I always loved that) who still doesn't know everything there is to know, a farandolae so small you couldn't even see him in a microscope. Yet as illustrated by Metron Ariston, size doesn't matter -- it is both "relative and irrelevant." All beings are important in some way and can effect major change in the universe -- these characters, despite differences in species and origin, together have a tremendous impact on the balance of good and evil. In addition, their struggles take place not on some grand cosmic battlefield but rather inside one mitochondria inside one cell inside one small boy on one planet. Their efforts are pivotal because every single thing is important and has a potential to fulfill.
I also love the book for kything-as-communication, an idea I find deeply thrilling. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in YA literature -- the notion that speaking to someone, really speaking, goes far beyond language and words. It's a communion of being. Calvin tells Meg, "Communication implies sound. Communion doesn't." Thus, farae can talk to the stars after they Deepen, yet still be rooted in one place. Vicky Austin can swim with dolphins and share with them her thoughts about time and death. Different types of creatures can work with and love each other. There is little need for sex or even any physical interaction at all -- what's most important is the meeting of minds and souls (although L'Engle rarely uses the second word).
More, this kind of communion is necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Progo tells Meg that all humans "need Deepening Places, too. And far too many never have any." Mr. Jenkins admits that he hasn't been a loving person, that he has always looked down on himself. This is a turning point for him -- by the end of the book, because of his communion with the other characters, he is finally able to fulfill his potential for good. Kything is so very important because L'Engle's fiction believes in interdependence. All beings in the universe are dependent upon each other for existence. It's an idea heard elsewhere, of course -- "no man is an island" should ring a bell.
Proginoskes again, to Meg: "You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos. Don't you understand that we're all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they're trying to destroy all Creation?" And to Sporos, "[W]e all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other." Later, the moment when Progo Xes himself, a "small white feather which was not a feather" floating through the cold. This is deep stuff for a book kids would normally read in sixth grade. I think it's more difficult than "A Wrinkle in Time." I honestly don't get much out of re-reading that one, but every time I come back to "Wind" I find I understand something on a deeper level than before.
*
A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Yep, reread this one also. For a long time I couldn't get behind this book at all. I found the genealogy confusing, and then when I puzzled it out, I disliked the necessity of it -- the focus on marriage to the right people, on procreation and having the right genes, the way physical traits reflected personality traits. Also, the repetition of the rune in every chapter got the hell on my nerves. But it makes Charles Wallace a far more sympathetic character, finally, and it's nice to see the Murrys at a point several years after the first two books.
It's also darker than the others in many ways, dealing not only with nuclear war and the threat of future disasters, but also with the tragedies in the various generations: fratricide, the downfall of lusting for power, domestic abuse.
I really want to see for myself that model of the tesseract Mr. Murry and Charles Wallace build. And imation23, I looked for your rant about Meg and other "ugly" female characters growing up to be beautiful, but couldn't find it. Just wanted to register my agreement again.
*
I didn't get to revisit Many Waters, but it's my second favorite after Wind, because of the theology and the sheer beauty of the scenes in which the seraphim and nephilim meet. And also because Sandy and Dennys finally get to be Teachers. Maybe I'll have more deep thoughts on this once I reread.
*
I also may have more thoughts on other L'Engle books involving these characters, especially Polly O'Keefe in An Acceptable Time or House Like a Lotus, but I need to go eat lunch now.
*
ETA: I forgot to include a link to this recent interview of L'Engle by Newsweek.
Ring was always one of my favorites of L'Engle's because I identified more with Vicky than with Meg Murry. Vicky was an aspiring writer rather than a whiz at numbers, and she lived in a world that wasn't affected by Mrs. Whatsits and cherubims, but rather by a handful of interesting, well-read and life-experienced human beings. I wanted Vicky's life more: communing with dolphins, traveling around the country (in The Moon by Night), dealing with boys like Zachary Gray and Adam Eddington. Not that Calvin O'Keefe wasn't a crush object or anything, but as I'll discuss below, the characters of Wrinkle always felt very distant to me (less so in the companion novels).
Ring deals with death and mortality. Vicky's grandfather is dying, a family friend is buried at the beginning of the book, Zachary's mother has recently passed away, Adam Eddington was in part responsible for someone else's death (The Arm of the Starfish), a dolphin baby dies, and at the end of the book, Vicky is forced to witness, literally at close hand, the death of a small child.
It's a coming-of-age story, a story about a transformative summer, a story with some elements of the fantastic (especially in the dolphin storyline) but on the whole, a story grounded in reality. Vicky's oversensitive and still very young, and the shock and sadness of the ending affect me every time because those feelings are real, tangible. Never mind L'Engle's stream-of-consciousness prose in the last few pages, which sometimes does and doesn't work in her books. What matters is the pain that reaches past the written word, that sense of the human capacity -- and necessity -- to endure such pain, or all else is meaningless.
I like the follow-up, Troubling a Star, much less, because it's more of an action/caper story while not having nearly as much to say as Starfish. And also, there was both too much and not enough Adam/Vicky.
*
After I reread Ring I skimmed through A Wrinkle in Time. I confess that this has never been one of my favorite novels. I have read it many times. I can quote passages verbatim. I can see how it's influenced my writing and reading preferences and even perhaps how it helped kick off my initial interest in science. But I've never actually liked it.
It's a deeply weird book, in many ways, full of cosmic and theological struggle and space travel. It's also a hard introduction to the major characters, none of whom speak and act like any children I ever knew. They're not meant to, of course, special and higher-purposed as they are, but I'm not inspired to care about Meg or Charles Wallace in the way I cared about them in A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They're made to be oddballs, like plenty of other protagonists in YA fiction, but to me, they're oddballs made up of superficial quirks and quotations and random facts, rather than oddballs I want to get to know. (This, by the way, is much the same reason I disliked Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.)
So what we're left with, then, is the story. I do like the story. I like cosmic struggles between good and evil, however binary. But I wonder if all the people who weighed in on elynross's discussions of C.S. Lewis's religious themes in the Narnia series have similar opinions about L'Engle's. Even in Wrinkle they're very much present -- albeit in a more straightforward way, i.e. when L'Engle says He, it's obvious she means God/Jesus and there isn't any "Aslan" to confuse people. Although I think you could read Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which as angels as much as former stars, especially if you factor in Proginoskes the cherubim from Wind and the oddly-materializing seraphim and nephilim from Many Waters (and even Calvin, at the end of the "Aunt Beast" chapter, describes them as "guardian angels" and "Messengers of God").
L'Engle's universe is one in which light and dark originally were in harmony, until the first enemy, the Echthros, desired all the power and glory for itself (read: Satan, described as "He" in Planet, "All Heaven with its power"). The first Echthros turned its back on the light and embraced the dark, and since then it's been a war for balance, where every being has the ability to affect everything else, and thus every being is vital to the struggle, however small. The Echthroi can be a "Black Thing" over planets like Earth and Camazotz (Wrinkle), can destroy matter and lead others into temptation (Wind), influence the course of history (Planet), and take the form of fallen angels (mostly Waters, but also Wind, "The First Test").
*
Everything I would want to say about A Wind in the Door I said previously here [original site is now down; see text reproduced below]. It's my favorite of the cycle, a book I think is superior to Wrinkle in terms of both characterization and thematic development.
ETA: text reproduced below
My favorite character in "A Wind in the Door" is Mr. Jenkins. Sometimes, of course, it's Proginoskes, because he has both the wisdom of an interstellar creature and the naivete of a student still learning how to learn. And because he's just so darn cool. [...] However, I think Mr. Jenkins is the one who most embodies the vision of the book, even more so than Meg. He encapsulates the idea that people can live entire lifetimes without ever truly knowing a sense of purpose (and by extension, their own identity) but that with love one can be Named, and become a pivotal figure in the war between good and evil.
I must note, however, that in "A Wind in the Door" everyone is a pivotal figure, even down to the tiny farandolae in your mitochondria. Madeleine L'Engle makes particular theological and moral assumptions in her books that I think can be off-putting to people who are extreme religious fundamentalists or extreme atheists (hence the reason "A Wrinkle in Time" was once attacked as anti-Christian). L'Engle's protagonists believe -- or come to believe -- in the overwhelming power of love to defeat hatred and evil, the goodness of God, the existence of a pattern in the universe in which everyone has a place and a role to fill.
For that last item, I have to stress it's not exactly destiny or fate she's writing about -- it's the fulfillment of one's potential. This is the key theme of "Wind," and it's more explicitly realized than in "Wrinkle." Both books have turning points at Meg's realizations that her love has the power to save Charles Wallace -- in "Wrinkle" through love of Charles Wallace himself, in Wind" through love and Naming of Mr. Jenkins, the wayward farandolae, and ultimately the Etchthroi. However, what is more clearly delineated in "Wind" is the pattern of normal growth and development and the necessary discovery of one's cosmic identity. The farandolae must put down roots and become farae, Charles Wallace must learn to adjust to public school, people must become Teachers or Namers, or must be Named in order to know who they really are. That kind of dialogue isn't really present in "Wrinkle," although the sense of Meg and Charles Wallace's potentials as warriors of good is still very much present.
When I say that "A Wind in the Door" resonates more with me than "A Wrinkle in Time," I don't really mean that I believe there's a set role for me to fulfill in life. It may sound limiting to be Named -- only a hop away from labeling, one might think-- but Progo equates Naming with loving. And for L'Engle, love is action rather than feeling. Progo says, "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do." Further, it is an affirmation of others' selfhood and is unconditional. To Name something is to help it be "more particularly the particular" thing it is supposed to be. To Name someone is to make him more him, who he is and who he is meant to be. This belief in patterns and potential empowers its characters rather than limits them. Adaptation to one's surroundings and expectations is necessary, but one must still retain essential individual qualities because these are the things that make you who you are, that make you Name-able.
In "Wind" we have an elementary school principal who lives a dry, thankless existence and is hated by nearly everyone he knows. He has a core of goodness inside, sometimes bubbling to the surface (see the story of Calvin's shoes) but for the most part it's deeply hidden. We have a girl who's always seen herself as ugly and inferior to her peers, a cherubim (singular, I always loved that) who still doesn't know everything there is to know, a farandolae so small you couldn't even see him in a microscope. Yet as illustrated by Metron Ariston, size doesn't matter -- it is both "relative and irrelevant." All beings are important in some way and can effect major change in the universe -- these characters, despite differences in species and origin, together have a tremendous impact on the balance of good and evil. In addition, their struggles take place not on some grand cosmic battlefield but rather inside one mitochondria inside one cell inside one small boy on one planet. Their efforts are pivotal because every single thing is important and has a potential to fulfill.
I also love the book for kything-as-communication, an idea I find deeply thrilling. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in YA literature -- the notion that speaking to someone, really speaking, goes far beyond language and words. It's a communion of being. Calvin tells Meg, "Communication implies sound. Communion doesn't." Thus, farae can talk to the stars after they Deepen, yet still be rooted in one place. Vicky Austin can swim with dolphins and share with them her thoughts about time and death. Different types of creatures can work with and love each other. There is little need for sex or even any physical interaction at all -- what's most important is the meeting of minds and souls (although L'Engle rarely uses the second word).
More, this kind of communion is necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Progo tells Meg that all humans "need Deepening Places, too. And far too many never have any." Mr. Jenkins admits that he hasn't been a loving person, that he has always looked down on himself. This is a turning point for him -- by the end of the book, because of his communion with the other characters, he is finally able to fulfill his potential for good. Kything is so very important because L'Engle's fiction believes in interdependence. All beings in the universe are dependent upon each other for existence. It's an idea heard elsewhere, of course -- "no man is an island" should ring a bell.
Proginoskes again, to Meg: "You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos. Don't you understand that we're all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they're trying to destroy all Creation?" And to Sporos, "[W]e all need each other. Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other." Later, the moment when Progo Xes himself, a "small white feather which was not a feather" floating through the cold. This is deep stuff for a book kids would normally read in sixth grade. I think it's more difficult than "A Wrinkle in Time." I honestly don't get much out of re-reading that one, but every time I come back to "Wind" I find I understand something on a deeper level than before.
*
A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Yep, reread this one also. For a long time I couldn't get behind this book at all. I found the genealogy confusing, and then when I puzzled it out, I disliked the necessity of it -- the focus on marriage to the right people, on procreation and having the right genes, the way physical traits reflected personality traits. Also, the repetition of the rune in every chapter got the hell on my nerves. But it makes Charles Wallace a far more sympathetic character, finally, and it's nice to see the Murrys at a point several years after the first two books.
It's also darker than the others in many ways, dealing not only with nuclear war and the threat of future disasters, but also with the tragedies in the various generations: fratricide, the downfall of lusting for power, domestic abuse.
I really want to see for myself that model of the tesseract Mr. Murry and Charles Wallace build. And imation23, I looked for your rant about Meg and other "ugly" female characters growing up to be beautiful, but couldn't find it. Just wanted to register my agreement again.
*
I didn't get to revisit Many Waters, but it's my second favorite after Wind, because of the theology and the sheer beauty of the scenes in which the seraphim and nephilim meet. And also because Sandy and Dennys finally get to be Teachers. Maybe I'll have more deep thoughts on this once I reread.
*
I also may have more thoughts on other L'Engle books involving these characters, especially Polly O'Keefe in An Acceptable Time or House Like a Lotus, but I need to go eat lunch now.
*
ETA: I forgot to include a link to this recent interview of L'Engle by Newsweek.