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A Wrinkle in Time

When my son was a pre-teen, he enjoyed the works of Madeleine L’Engle, especially her book entitled “A Wrinkle in Time.” Madeleine L’Engle ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic was born from concerns for the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the world. As we face the potential of a nuclear powered nation aggressively invading a peaceful nation and threatening nuclear annihilation, could Ms. L’Engle’s concerns become our reality? Let us hope not.

An Excerpt –

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”

From Abigail Santamaria, who is writing a biography of Madeleine L’Engle:

Thinking lots about Madeleine L’Engle’s “time series,” born of her Cold War anxieties. “I look at the children, the budding trees, the sky, the tiny purple violets,” she wrote in her journal in spring of 1959, “And I think: how can anyone wantonly contemplate destroying all this?”

Nuclear annihilation permeated her dreams: “Last night I dreamed that I had written a letter to Eisenhower with the solution to the Berlin problem, to all international problems. It was simple. Just to issue a proclamation of our own, saying that under no circumstances would we drop a

nuclear bomb of our own. If a war is started by someone dropping a bomb it will be Russia, not America, who will do it. And we will not retaliate. We will have nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear warfare. Russia wants to be the savior of the eastern world. How, under these circumstances, could she start a war without completely losing face? They would all immediately come over to the west.”

She never wrote that letter to Eisenhower. Instead, she began drafting A WRINKLE IN TIME, her portrait of confronting evil and defeating darkness. “This is my psalm of praise to life,” she wrote when the manuscript was finished: “my stand for life against death.” (posted with permission)

 

 

Wrinkleintime

 

Katherine Korkidis

Author Katherine Korkidis

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