Opening Passages: From A Wrinkle in Time:
It was a dark and stormy night.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground. (p. 11)
From A Wind in the Door:
"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden."
Meg Murry took her head out of the refrigerator where she had been foraging for an after-school snack, and looked at her six-year-old brother. "What?" (p. 9)
From A Swiftly Tilting Planet:
The big kitchen of the Murrys' house was bright and warm, curtains drawn against the dark outside, against he rain driving past the house from the northeast. Meg Murry O'Keefe had made an arrangmeent of chrysanthemums for the dining table, and the yellow, bronze, and pale-gold blossoms seemed to add light to the room. A delectable smell of roasting turkey came from the oven, and her mother stood by the stove, stirring the giblet gravy. (p. 9)
From Many Waters:
A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice.
"We can't even see the puck," Sandy Murry shouted across the wind. "Let's go home." He skated over to the side of the frozen pond, sitting on an already snow-covered rock to take off his skates. (p.3)
Summary: In A Wrinkle in Time, the thirteen-year-old Meg Murry is an awkward adolescent of scientific parents whose father has disappeared and whose younger brother, Charles Wallace, is a genius whom their village regards as weird. Meg and Charles Wallace meet a local boy, Calvin O'Keefe, who comes from a poor family locally regarded as somewhat trashy, but who has become popular because of his skill in basketball, although he actually loves biology. The three meet three strange women who are the Murrys' new neighbors, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. The three will help them find and rescue Meg's father, who in his scientific research has accidentally tessered, i.e., traveled by folding space, to another planet, Camazotz, where he is the prisoner of IT, a giant brain that serves as the totalitarian government of the planet.
If Wrinkle depicts a fight against evil in its totalitarian form, A Wind in the Door depicts a fight against evil in its anarchic form. It is a year later; Charles Wallace is being bullied in school, and Meg tries to convince Mr. Jenkins, the principal, to do something about it. It does not go well, in part because Meg and Mr. Jenkins have a difficult and unpleasant prior history. Charles Wallace is also sick, and Mrs. Murry, whose scientific work seems to be at the intersection of particle physics and microbiology, thinks it is because his mitochondria are dying due to some problem with what she hypothesizes to be key sub-mitochondrial entities, farandolae. In the meantime, various strange things happen. Charles Wallace finds 'dragons' in the garden, which turns out to be a singular many-winged, many-eyed cherubim, and Meg encounters frightening fake Mr. Jenkinses. Charles Wallace is growing sick because his mitochondria are under attack by the Echthroi (echthros in Greek means 'enemy'), who attempt to annihilate anything in existence. Under the guidance of a Teacher, Meg, Calvin, Mr. Jenkins, and the cherubim, whose name is Proginoskes, enter a mitochondrion in Charles Wallace, where they must convince Sporos, a farandola, to settle down and enter his mature phase rather than to devote himself to nihilistic license.
One thing that was clear to me this time around that was certainly not clear to me when I was younger is that Wind is structured as a love story between Meg and Calvin. This is not, I think, obvious from the struture of the plot, and while Calvin plays an important role in the events, for much of the story Meg and Calvin are for all practical purposes separate. But the Meg-Calvin relationship frames much of the story, and the importance of it is hinted at by the title of the book, which refers to an episode in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur involving the love between Sir Gareth and Dame Lyonesse.
In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which occurs ten years after Wind, Meg, now married to Calvin, is home for Thanksgiving; Calvin is away at a conference, but Calvin's mother, Mrs. O'Keefe, has unexpectedly accepted the invitation to dinner, despite having always refused before. The world is on edge; a South American dictator, known as Mad Dog Branzillo, has obtained nuclear weapons and is likely to use them. Mrs. O'Keefe begins acting strangely and tells Charles Wallace to deal with Branzillo, giving him a rune or rhyming verse and then going home. Charles Wallace says the rune at the star-watching rock and it summons a winged unicorn, Gaudior. Charles Wallace and Gaudior will travel through time to prevent the war, aided by Meg who remains behind but follows them by kything, a sort of deep interpersonal connection ('kythe', a primarily Scottish word, means both making known and becoming known, and it has both meanings in L'Engle's usage).
Planet is the most lyrically beautiful of the works, but in reading reviews it becomes very clear that readers have difficulties understanding the points it makes. The time-travel portion of the work is based on the Welsh Legend, a story in many variations that goes back to the Renaissance, according to which a Welsh ship arrived in North America long before the Vikings, under the command of Madoc (or Madog), a Welsh prince fleeing dissension at home. This has the narrative interest of letting you tell you tell a Celtic-tinged story in an American context. In L'Engle's adapted version, Madoc weds into a local native tribe, the People of the Wind, but his happiness is cut short by the arrival of his brother, Gwydyr, who also fled but instead of settling peacefully with the natives is attempting to make himself a king. They fight, but part of their fight is not physical; they set up dueling fates, to culminate in a child, who is Branzillo. The weapon of the duel of fate is fire -- if Gwydyr wins that duel, the world will perish in fire (Branzillo's nuclear war), whereas Madoc's fire is a subtler fire, which we might call the fire of love.
Many readers seem to interpret this dueling-fates structure as a sort of genetic determinism -- over and over again, you can find reviewers characterizing it as a struggle over whether 'the good line' or 'the bad line', genetically speaking, will triumph. This is a way one could interpret comments by one of the characters, but this is over-reading, I think, and it is actually somewhat disturbing that so many readers are apparently only able to interpret heritage in terms of genetic transmission. The book is about cycles of violence that are handed down in families through the generations. What we do know is that Gwydyr's lust for domination, his spiritual line, keeps recurring. The duel of fates is not over whether Gwydyr's line or Madoc's line will triumph; the two are brothers and the duel is over what will happen in a single family. It is strongly implied that all the members of later generations are descended from Madoc (and maybe also from Gwdyr, although this is less clear -- we don't actually know for sure that Gwydyr has any biological descendants, although it is suggested as a possibility at one point). The fate that Gwydyr sets is a cycle of violence passing through generations, culminating in nuclear fire, and what Charles Wallace and Gaudior are doing is not trying somehow to get Branzillo the right ancestors, however that would work, but to find the 'Might Have Been' in Branzillo's family history where love can break the cycle of familial violence leading to more violence. This Might Have Been is represented throughout by the rune, in which one gives up a desire to dominate and possess and puts one's protection in divine hands. The key moments are when Matthew Maddox gives up his love of Zillah to help her be with Bran and when Mrs. O'Keefe, who is a descendant, gives Charles Wallace the rune for protection in memory of her brother, who was disabled and eventually died because of an abusive stepfather. This is also the theme indicated by the title, which is from a poem by Conrad Aiken, in which small things touch on the universe.
Many Waters can in some ways be regarded as an appendix; we get an adventure involving the Murry middle children, the twins Sandy and Dennys, who accidentally interfere with one of the experiments being run by their father and end up in a strange desert place with mammoths, manticores, and griffins, in which all the human beings are very short. There are also two special kinds of being, seraphim and nephilim, who have unusual powers; the nephilim are intermarrying with the human beings. They are aided by a family, that of Grandfather Lamech, who is estranged from his son, Noah; the twins help heal the fragmented family. They have fallen, of course, into the story of Noah and the Flood, and will have to get back home before the waters come. In the course of the story, the twins will both fall in love with the young woman, Yalith, and a major concern through the story is what will happen to her, since she is not one of the people saved by the Ark. The title of the book, of course, comes from the Song of Songs: "Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it."
The entire series is interesting in that it manages, for the most part, to make its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to science fantasy work. The series as a whole is about how even the minor and ordinary pars of our lives link up to the wonders of a creation that is based on love and is held together by joy, and as you meet everything from angels to aliens to mythical beasts, you get a very developed sense of the vastness, and the vast richness, of the universe it depicts, one in which almost anything could happen, but never without purpose. It is an overwhelming vision, but one made coherent by the recurring motif of the centrality of acts of love. And the vision is, I think, one of the attractions the series has always had for bookish children everywhere, because it gives a sense that the reader is not separate from it all; we are rather like Meg, kything with Charles Williams in Planet as he goes Within various people, experiencing in the reading an adventure not our own by making known and being known.
Favorite Passages: From Wrinkle:
"It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning."
Mrs. Which spoke again. Her voice sounded tired, and they knew that speaking was a tremendous effort for her. "Itt wass nnott sso llongg aggo fforr yyou, wwass itt?" she asked gently.
Mrs. Whatsit shook her head.
Charles Wallace went up to Mrs. Whatsit. "I see. Now I understand. You were a star, once, weren't you?"
Mrs. Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded. (pp. 86-87)
From Wind:
"When Sporos Deepens," Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, "it means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe, but nothing created is the center." (p. 172)
From Planet:
The baby unicorn stood on new and wobbly legs, neighing a soft moonbeam sound until it gained its balance. It stood barely as tall as Charles Wallace, testing one forehoof, then the other, and kicking out its hind legs. As Charles Wallace watched, lost in delight, the baby unicorn danced under the light of the two moons. (p. 156)
From Many Waters:
"Are they part of the pattern?" Admael asked. "Is it right and proper for them to be here?"
Alarid looked up at the veiled sky. "Perhaps Aariel will have word when he returns from taking Yalith to the Presence. But I think, yes, that they are part of the pattern."
"The pattern is not set," Adnarel said. "It is fluid, and constantly changing."
"But it will be worked out in beauty in the end," Admael affirmed. (p. 304)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
******
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time. Dell (New York: 1976).
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door. Dell (New York: 1976).
Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Dell (New York: 1979).
Madeleine L'Engle, Many Waters. Dell (New York: 1987).
