Madeleine, Joss, Oprah and You
I discovered this past weekend that 2018 is the Madeleine L'Engle Centennial. What would have been her 100th birthday comes at the end of November. The first of what will probably be a number of podcasts about her life and her writing came out last month, when Marketplace's "Make Me Smart" read A Wrinkle in Time for their Book Club and interviewed one of her two granddaughters who collaborated on a new biography that's coming out. Give it a listen if you're so inclined.
There are many different themes in A Wrinkle in Time, but one they discussed at length in the podcast was new to me - the idea of Meg having to be her own rescuer. Meg's father is missing when the story begins, and she's told he's been fighting a sinister dark force that threatens to consume all of creation. They go off in search of him, and at that point we think, "Once they find him, he'll be able to save the day." Only he can't. Meg has to do it instead - which she then does.
As I said, that idea as applied to A Wrinkle in Time was new to me. But the idea in general... hmmm... I felt like I'd heard that before. Where was it? Hmmm...
"He's a guy who looks into the void and sees nothing but the void — and says there is no moral structure, there is no help, no one's coming, no one gets it, I have to do it."
That's the description Joss Whedon gave for Mal Reynolds, Captain of the starship Serenity in his outer space western, Firefly. And you won't find many character pairs that are more dissimilar than Meg Murry and Mal Reynolds. You won't find many pairs of stories that are more dissimilar, either. And even though they have that same theme in common, what they do with it is completely different, too.
Meg saves the day through the love she has for her brother, Charles Wallace. Madeleine L'Engle put a lot of spirituality into her stories, and A Wrinkle in Time is no exception. Meg is on her own, but she is never really alone, because her love connects her to the Greater Love that powers the universe. The evil entity IT is no match for her.
Mal isn't really alone - he has his trusty crew at his side, after all - but he is on his own, because he's jettisoned any kind of moral structure. "[W]hat he believes in is the next job, the next paycheck and keeping his crew safe," Joss told us. You could say that he loves his crew, in his snarky, prickly sort of way, but it's not connected to anything. He certainly wouldn't give IT any trouble.
At this point, you could tell me that A Wrinkle in Time is written for children and Firefly is written for adults, so of course Joss would take the attitude he does. At which point, I'd quote Madeleine, saying, "if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
So what does all this stuff have to do with us? For that, I turn to Oprah Winfrey's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last night. A lot of people - myself included - noted how much the speech sounded like Oprah was getting ready to run for President, but Slate's Dahlia Lithwick noticed something else that the rest of us missed. "The dominant theme I heard," she wrote, "was about giving voice to invisible people. It was the arc of the entire speech." She wasn't up there saying, "I alone can fix it," the way Donald Trump did last summer. She was telling all of us - young women of color specifically, but the rest of us by extension - to get out there and fix it.
This is where we are today. The country is being run by corporations, plutocrats and Russian assets, none of whom give a hoot about the rest of us. What do we do about it? Pin everything on having a strong leader of the Democratic Party come along? That's what the Republicans have done in Trump, and look at the way they've abandoned their morals and principles to prop him up. I'd rather not go down that path myself. Pin all our hopes on flipping the House and the Senate in November? Okay, that would actually be a good thing, but it can't be all we do. It won't be enough. There are millions of different things that need to be done. Good thing there are millions of us available to do them.
And if we're the ones who have to do it, which character would you like to be? Mal or Meg? Would you rather just shuffle along, only looking out for yourself and your crew, or would you rather believe in something greater than yourself? It doesn't even have to be something spiritual, if you're not into that kind of thing. The American ideals written in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will do just fine.
If no one's coming, then we've got to do it. What's your choice going to be?
There are many different themes in A Wrinkle in Time, but one they discussed at length in the podcast was new to me - the idea of Meg having to be her own rescuer. Meg's father is missing when the story begins, and she's told he's been fighting a sinister dark force that threatens to consume all of creation. They go off in search of him, and at that point we think, "Once they find him, he'll be able to save the day." Only he can't. Meg has to do it instead - which she then does.
As I said, that idea as applied to A Wrinkle in Time was new to me. But the idea in general... hmmm... I felt like I'd heard that before. Where was it? Hmmm...
"He's a guy who looks into the void and sees nothing but the void — and says there is no moral structure, there is no help, no one's coming, no one gets it, I have to do it."
That's the description Joss Whedon gave for Mal Reynolds, Captain of the starship Serenity in his outer space western, Firefly. And you won't find many character pairs that are more dissimilar than Meg Murry and Mal Reynolds. You won't find many pairs of stories that are more dissimilar, either. And even though they have that same theme in common, what they do with it is completely different, too.
Meg saves the day through the love she has for her brother, Charles Wallace. Madeleine L'Engle put a lot of spirituality into her stories, and A Wrinkle in Time is no exception. Meg is on her own, but she is never really alone, because her love connects her to the Greater Love that powers the universe. The evil entity IT is no match for her.
Mal isn't really alone - he has his trusty crew at his side, after all - but he is on his own, because he's jettisoned any kind of moral structure. "[W]hat he believes in is the next job, the next paycheck and keeping his crew safe," Joss told us. You could say that he loves his crew, in his snarky, prickly sort of way, but it's not connected to anything. He certainly wouldn't give IT any trouble.
At this point, you could tell me that A Wrinkle in Time is written for children and Firefly is written for adults, so of course Joss would take the attitude he does. At which point, I'd quote Madeleine, saying, "if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
So what does all this stuff have to do with us? For that, I turn to Oprah Winfrey's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last night. A lot of people - myself included - noted how much the speech sounded like Oprah was getting ready to run for President, but Slate's Dahlia Lithwick noticed something else that the rest of us missed. "The dominant theme I heard," she wrote, "was about giving voice to invisible people. It was the arc of the entire speech." She wasn't up there saying, "I alone can fix it," the way Donald Trump did last summer. She was telling all of us - young women of color specifically, but the rest of us by extension - to get out there and fix it.
This is where we are today. The country is being run by corporations, plutocrats and Russian assets, none of whom give a hoot about the rest of us. What do we do about it? Pin everything on having a strong leader of the Democratic Party come along? That's what the Republicans have done in Trump, and look at the way they've abandoned their morals and principles to prop him up. I'd rather not go down that path myself. Pin all our hopes on flipping the House and the Senate in November? Okay, that would actually be a good thing, but it can't be all we do. It won't be enough. There are millions of different things that need to be done. Good thing there are millions of us available to do them.
And if we're the ones who have to do it, which character would you like to be? Mal or Meg? Would you rather just shuffle along, only looking out for yourself and your crew, or would you rather believe in something greater than yourself? It doesn't even have to be something spiritual, if you're not into that kind of thing. The American ideals written in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will do just fine.
If no one's coming, then we've got to do it. What's your choice going to be?
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