A Swiftly Tilting Planet
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A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a 1978 science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle, part of the Time Quartet.
In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace Murry, an advanced and perceptive child in A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, has grown into an adolescent. His intelligence and remarkable goodness carry him through an adventure in time to save the world from nuclear disaster threatened by Mad Dog Branzillo, the dictator of the fictional South American country of Vespugia. In order to change the outcome of the present, Charles Wallace must change the past, in a series of "might-have-beens," events which are turning points fought over by the powers of good and evil.
Plot synopsis
The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, about 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference. The Murry family is joined for Thanksgiving dinner by an unusual guest — Meg’s very antisocial mother-in-law, Mrs. O'Keefe. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator Mad Dog Branzillo, Mrs. O'Keefe lays a charge on Charles Wallace — to prevent the disaster. She teaches him "Patrick's Rune", a rhyming prayer of protection that has been passed down to her from her Irish grandmother. The verse given as Patrick's Rune is in fact an adaptation of an authentic medieval prayer, "Saint Patrick's Breastplate", which in turn is a variation on the Lorica of Saint Patrick.Charles Wallace goes for a walk to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, and begins to recite Patrick's Rune. His recitation summons a flying unicorn from the heavens, who introduces himself as Gaudior. The unicorn explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived in the locale of the star-watching rock at points in the past. By doing so he may change pivotal situations, "might-have-beens", in which things might have turned out better than they did. Unsure how events in the distant past near his home can affect a South American dictator, Charles Wallace agrees.
They are threatened along the way by the echthroi, the antogonists introduced in A Wind in the Door. The echthroi are evil beings whose goal is the total destruction of the universe. As Charles Wallace tries to make the might-have-beens turn out for good, the echthroi are fighting to make them turn out for evil.
Gaudior and Charles Wallace's travels bring them to: Harcels, a native American boy at least 1000 years in the past; Madoc Gywnedd of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Mrs. O'Keefe's brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood; and Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War who wrote a novel about the legend of Madoc Gywnedd. Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through "kything," the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door.
Eventually, a connection arises between the star-watching rock and Mad Dog Branzillo. In the 1100s, two Welsh princes named Madoc and Gwyddyr travelled to North America to escape the in-fighting for their father's throne. But once there, Gwyddyr turned against Madoc and tried to conquer their new home. Madoc defeated Gwyddyr in combat, and Gwyddyr left to South America. Both men married into the local Native American populations and became part of the local folklore. Many generations later in the 1860s, Matthew Maddox's sister Gwen married a descendant of Gwyddyr, and Mad Dog Branzillo was their descendant. While Charles Wallace is inhabiting Matthew Maddox, however, things turn out differently and Gwen instead marries a descendant of Madoc. This results in a peaceful man being born instead, named Madoc Branzillo, and the threat of nuclear war is dissolved.
As in L’Engle’s other works, family and spirituality are key.
The Horn of Joy
Matthew Maddox's second novel, The Horn of Joy (1868), serves as a McGuffin in A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Charles Wallace spends a significant portion of the book trying to remember or discover what Maddox wrote in it, or to reach Maddox himself as a way of learning how to fix the right might-have-been. Readers sometimes wonder[link] whether The Horn of Joy ever existed; but it is a fictional book, created by L'Engle. Maddox's equally fictional first novel, Once More United, is said to have been published in 1865.Vespugia
Vespugia is the same fictional country that L'Engle's character Vicky Austin later visits in Troubling a Star. L'Engle explains in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art that Vespugia is "set in the middle of what used to be called Patagonia, a sizeable area along what are now the boundaries of Chile and Argentina." L'Engle's husband, Hugh Franklin, is credited with having named Vespugia.Series
This is the last book of the Time Quartet, preceded by, in order, A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and Many Waters. Many Waters was written and published later than A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but takes place earlier with respect to the characters. These four books plus An Acceptable Time are occasionally referred to as the Time Quintet[link]. However, An Acceptable Time takes place a generation after A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and is more properly part of the Polly O'Keefe series of books. The larger "Murry-O'Keefe" series (the Time Quartet plus the books with Poly/Polly O'Keefe in them) contains three novels between A Swiftly Tilting Planet and An Acceptable Time. These are The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters and A House Like a Lotus.External links
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