About a week and a half ago, on 9/6, Madeleine L’Engle passed away. I don’t suppose that it’s fair that it’s taken me this long to get around to writing about that …
There is a possibility that her A Wrinkle in Time was the first real science fiction novel that I ever read, when I was about nine years old in the summer between fourth and fifth grades. It was about two years later that I read A Wind in the Door and probably another five before I got around to A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Looking back on them, I really didn’t appreciate them as much more than the wonderful stories that they were — though the first, especially, helped introduce me to the ideas that would make me the fan of science fiction and fantasy that I am today.
Having read the Time Trilogy (or Time Quartet, if you include Many Waters) recently to my sons, I have rediscovered the wonders of the stories. Meg Murry (O’Keefe in A Swiftly Tilting Planet) is a wonderful character with great parents and genuine love and affection for her brothers. Unlike the popular model today, wherein heroes have to be rebellious rule-breakers, the heroes of the Time Trilogy are respectful, obedient, and decent kids — even the time when Meg sneaks into the wrong school is hardly that bad, and it’s seen much more as an act of desperation than defiance.
Madeleine L’Engle did not write down to children. It was in A Wrinkle in Time that I first read the term “tesseract” and in which the concept of warped space was first explained. (Notably, I suppose, the definition of tesseract used in the book is more like a wormhole, but we’ll skip that for now … it’s not an astrophysics text.) There is much quoting of classical literature and the Bible, and ultimately the story tells about love as power against darkness.
A Wind in the Door features that hated school principal as one of the heroes — an interesting lesson in love and forgiveness. In fact, it is impossible for Meg to save her brother Charles Wallace if she doesn’t forgive and love him, even though she doesn’t like him.
I have to admit, I’ve only read the Time Trilogy of hers. I suppose that her passing could lead me to the almost-inevitable rush to consume the rest of her works (as happened with Rich Mullins after his death ten years ago … that article will be coming on the anniversary on Wednesday). In any case, she represents the school of thought that children should have stories written for them that introduce them to concepts to learn, rather than dumbing-down the writing to suit them.
She also spoke of her Christian faith in her writing, and used Christian language and Christian imagery to tell her stories. Love, forgiveness, faith, and hope were vital to saving the day in her stories — much as in real life. IT could not have been defeated by Bruce Willis with a machine gun, but by three kids who cared for and loved each other enough not to give in to hatred.
It’s good to see stories like this. Remembering them was one thing. Sharing them with my sons over the past couple years has been great. I now look forward to sharing them with my daughter when she becomes older.
One final word, which I feel I must always include with any mention of A Wrinkle in Time: Disney made a direct-to-DVD movie version a few years ago. Avoid it at all costs. It is stripped of most of the Christian references, and the ending is skewed as if to say that evil no longer exists in the universe … a cute Disney-esque ending, to be sure, but nothing like the story in the book, or like real life.
