Thoughts on L'Engle's _A Ring of Endless Light_

[3rdragon]

I just finished A Ring of Endless Light. I really like that book. It's a dark and gritty and deep while still being bright and very alive, full of joy and wonder. It's a study in contrasts, and the sorrow makes the the joy even more poignant.
Brief digression on the subject of joy: This time while I was reading, I was particularly struck by one particular quote, "Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God." Google says that it's from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Anyway, back to the book. I always associate this book with Poly and the O'Keefes, probably because Adam is in it a lot, and because the paperback version (which I have?) has an image of a girl swimming in the sea with a dolphin leaping over her, and the dolphin always makes me think of Marina, Poly's particular friend - but this is very much a book about Vicky, about her struggles and glories. It is, in some ways, Vicky's version of A House Like a Lotus, with the same focus on grief and growing up, but there's less attention to loss of innocence and more to an affirmation of life, not in ignorance of the realities of the world, but despite - because of - them.

I have some tendency to divide L'Engle's work into categories: sci-fi, realistic fiction, and adult (extra-realistic). I think of all of the Austins books as realistic, and most of the ones about Calvin and Meg's children as realistic too (except that one about Polly and time travel - the one that isn't A Ring of Endless Light, even though it has that circle on the cover . . . what's it called . . . An Acceptable Time), but really, they aren't. The laser in The Young Unicorns is mildly sci-fi, and the whole Starfish business is, but dolphin telepathic communication and non-linear time is certainly beyond the pale, but I'd just taken it in stride before (it's a lovely idea, though, isn't it).

I have to say that I really don't get it about Zachary. Yes, I understand that he's as rich as they come, and perfectly happy to spend money on a girl, and that he's handsome in an ebony-and-snow sort of way, and that he tends to make the female protagonists weak-kneed. I also understand that he has rather a talent for being incredibly needy, and for making whoever he's on the date with feel like she's the only woman in the world, but still . . .
I really just can't wrap my mind around the idea of going out with a guy who I couldn't trust on the most basic level of not getting me killed because he drives like a maniac. (Did that sentence actually cohese? I'm not sure, but you get the idea.) See, when I run into those people, I generally don't get back into a car with them at the wheel. Or if it's fairly unavoidable to get back home (although really, if someone were to drive like Zachary does, I think I'd manage to find my own way home fro New York. No, on second thought, I'd manage to find my own way home from some hole-in-the-wall gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike somewhere because I wouldn't even have gotten to New York before demanding to be let out of the car for the sake of my health and sanity), I don't agree to get back in a car them. And I really don't arrange to go on another date with them next Wednesday.
Zachary dances with death. And not just his death, but the deaths of lots of other people, too. I'm not saying that he's a daredevil. I've known daredevils. In particular, I'm thinking of my closest guy friend in middle school, who was more than a bit of a pyro and would do the most ridiculous things on his bicycle, including knocking out his two front teeth, but about whom I always had a very strong feeling that whatever he did, he would never risk someone else in something he wasn't sure of. I recall my mother saying that he would grow up to be a very nice man, provided he survived that long. Zachary isn't like that. He threatens to run over old ladies for a thrill, or to get a rise out of a girl. In a really fey mood, he'll risk entire passenger planes in wild stunts. It's like he has no idea that consequences exist that you can't buy your way out of. Or he doesn't really understand that death tends to be irreversible under the generally accepted way of running the universe, except possibly in special religious cases. Or maybe he just believes that science will eventually fix death,* and he has enough money to buy a ticket to then, so why bother being careful? Or, I rather suspect that he doesn't care. He seems to feel that nothing matters. I suppose that it's tied in to his lack of belief in any sort of higher anything, but it doesn't make sense to me. I think that if I weren't religious, I'd still try to spend my life enjoying as much of it as I could and doing my best to see that everybody else has a good time too, or at least a somehow fulfilling or meaningful one, on the logic that if this life and this planet is all we've got, we'd better make it a really good one. Which isn't to criticize L'Engle. I know that there are people who feel the way Zachary does, I just don't get it. At all. I guess you could say that it's incompatible with my experience of existence.

And yet, despite all this, Zachary still surprises me. I wouldn't have thought that he would talk to the Rodneys, for example. E.M. Forster described a round character as one who can surprise you convincingly; I suppose Zachary is quite round. Or at least deep. I still wouldn't go out with him, though.




*About that whole cryonics thing. He has some sort of babble about a dream of a world where it's available for everyone. Doesn't it occur to him that if some decent fraction of the world's population decided that they wanted to be zombies at some point in the future and the science to make it work was actually developed, it would be a huge problem in terms of population? I mean, we're crowded already without a bunch of people who died ages ago coming back to live the good life. I suppose that population wasn't as bad a problem 28 years ago, but it wasn't totally off the horizon. Also, how can you be sure that the future is a world you'd want to live in? (Particularly if, like Zachary, you can't seem to even be sure that you want to live in this one?) Maybe I'm just alarmist, but advanced medical technology is no guarantee of nice people or a decent standard of living. But perhaps for someone who feels that "Most people are . . . out for number one, and they don't give a damn about anybody else, and if they have to step on you to get where they want, they don't even notice you lying in a pool of blood--literal or figurative." And concludes with the definite note that he approves of behaving this way, because, "It's the only way to get on in the world." and that "Money's what makes it possible to cope with the real world. If you don't get it, it'll get you,"^ would be - not happy - able to get on in any capitalist society, and unable to conceive of any society other than a capitalist one.
I can't help but feel that it's a terribly narrow way to view the world.

^Quotes from pages 294 and 302, respectively, of the second printing of A Ring of Endless Light.

Comments

[relique.livejournal.com]

This is a situation in which i need there to be one of those 3 hour long Smith Dinners to talk about this book.

Instead, I type.

L'Engle separated her "young adults" books into Chronos and Kairos-- the two types of greek time.

Chronos=watch time=mainly realistic=Austins
Kairos=heart time=more fluid=Murry/O'Keefes.

Of course, there's plenty of overlap-- Zach and Adam, and others.

I think that Vicky struggles like you do with understanding Zach. But where you reject him, she's curious about him. She is so... connected. Even in NYC, she makes connections, and is integrated. After aRoEL, when she's lost back in Thornhill, she connects with Serena and Antarctica. You are much the same-- between fencing, SSFFS, the .... uh... Smith Christian Fellowship? (did I get lucky?)..... Anyway.... You're very connected.

There are rich people who manage to stay connected, and manage to raise their children as connected people. I know quite a few of them, and you do too (and often you can't tell they have money...) And then there are the rich people who use money to raise their children. Here... Zach is suicidal and lost, and doesn't know how lost he is. He's better in Lotus, but not much.

I'd also like to point out that we don't know reliable Vicky is as a narrator. My mother tends to drive 55 on the Mass Pike (I don't feel that safe going below 65 considering how fast everyone else is, and depending on time/traffic level/area of the road, 80 is perfectly safe. But it took me a little while to adjust to how real people drive when I first started driving with Not My Parents. While Polly also mentions that he's a bit.. fast... he also drives cars that can handle higher speeds, and Polly isn't as freaked out as Vicky. Is this completely because Zach has calmed down? Maybe. But we can't be certain.

[3rdragon]

Eccumenical Christian Community, actually. Smith Christian Fellowship is one of the conservative ones (I mean, for Smith).

I don't mean to rag on rich people. I know plenty of excellent people with gobs of money - I just feel lick Zachary hasn't managed to figure out that money isn't the answer to problems (despite his talk of, "Money can't make you happy, but it can let you be unhappy more comfortably," or something like that).

I don't think that my issue with Zachary's driving is how safe or unsafe it actually is - the fact is that it makes Vicky feel unsafe (to the point where some fairly significant fraction of all time spent with Zachary or thinking about Zachary is in a state of mild to severe freak-out about his driving). And if someone's driving made me feel that unsafe, I wouldn't ride with them. Even if it meant not going.
I also somewhat feel that one's perception of safety while driving doesn't necessarily have to do so much with the speed of the vehicle, but also with the level of trust you have in the driver and with the manner in which the driver handles the vehicle. (For example, it's occurred to me at some point that Scott drives fast-ish. I'd never noticed. I think it's because I trust him enough that while I know he may not always do exactly what's best for the team, he's not going to do something so clearly bad for the team as risk all of our lives by doing stupid things driving the van.

[relique.livejournal.com]

Bah. Christians and their.... names. I'm just impressed I got the name of a real group.

L'Engle's Zach reminds me of Zia's Zac. Down to the point where, after driving with him *once*, Matt didn't want me in a car Zac was driving. (Zac was about to do something dumb, in a car that couldn't really handle it. Matt's hand went to the e-brake, Zac was offended. There were three of us in a backseat with two seat belts, I was the one in the middle.) Matt does show-offey things in the car, but he spent a couple years of high school and college going to abandoned parking lots and practicing.... so while I don't always appreciate what he does, he has a pretty good idea of how the car will react.


Scott drive "fast" in the van, but he doesn't do weird shit. When you get in the golf, and he knows you won't freak out, that's when he does the weird stuff. Like... You know how the pillars in walkways get moved to the side during the winter so the plows can get through?? That allows Scott to drop people off --at--the--door-- of Washburn.

[3rdragon]

Yes, that was pretty impressive.

It's sad that when I have enough time to read, I don't have people around to discuss books with properly. (Which is not to say that there aren't plenty of people I can (and have) discussed books with, just that I miss having you and kadharonon and chocochan and vorindi to babble at/with.)