Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,041
edits
A Swiftly Tilting Planet: Difference between revisions
fixed tropelist alphabetization
m (Mass update links) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (fixed tropelist alphabetization) |
||
| (8 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{work}}
The third book in [[Madeleine L
Reciting a rune bestowed upon him by his in-law Mrs. O'Keefe, Charles Wallace summons the winged [[Unicorn]] Gaudior, who takes him on a journey through time to seemingly random events, all connected by location and the name "Maddox". Their mission is to change several important "[[For Want of a Nail|might-have-beens]]" to avert disaster in the present. The Echthroi, evil beings introduced in ''[[A Wind in
----▼
▲----
{{tropelist}}
* [[Abusive Parents|Abusive Stepdad]]: Duthbert Mortmain in the Chuck arc.
* [[After the End]]: The Projections. Both were possible futures after a nuclear war on Earth encountered during interdimensional travel. One was an apocalyptic wasteland with hideously mutated barely-sentient "humans", another one had some semblance of civilization with a city of concrete bunkers and [[Gas Mask Mooks|gas-mask-wearing soldiers]].
* [[American Civil War]]
* [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]: The events of ''[[Many Waters]]'' happen before ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet''. After a time-traveling adventure to thousands of years before the birth of Christ, you'd think that Sandy and Dennys would not be so incredulous. This is explained by the fact that L'Engle wrote ''Many Waters'' eight years after ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', but for anyone reading the books in their chronological order this is just weird.
* [[Arcadia]]: The area where the Murrys live, in the past.
* [[Arc Words]]: St. Patrick's Rune.
* [[Artistic License Astronomy]]: The following exchange takes place when talking about ''nuclear war''.
{{quote|
'''Charles Wallace:''' "It just might throw off the balance of things, so that the sun would burst into a supernova." }}
** Ah, but in this highly fantastical reality, stars are ''literally'' living, feeling, thinking entities that ''sing for joy''. Where everything, from the tiniest smaller-than-cells organism to the greatest galaxy is a vitally important, interconnected part of creation! The loss of one of its planets might well cause the Time-verse Sun to go dark... or even sacrifice itself.
Line 20:
* [[Bad Future]]: the "Projections" created by the Echthroi.
* [[Badass Creed]]: The Rune.
{{quote|
''I place all Heaven with its power,''
''And the sun with its brightness, ''
''And the snow with its whiteness, ''
''And the fire with all the strength it hath, ''
''And the lightning with its rapid wrath, ''
''And the winds with their swiftness along their path, ''
''And the sea with its deepness, ''
''And the rocks with their steepness, ''
''And the earth with its starkness, ''
''All these I place ''
''By God's almighty help and grace''
'' '''Between myself and the powers of darkness!"''' '' }}
* [[Badass Pacifist]]: The Rune itself, and everyone who uses it. Violence crops up from time to time (always regretted), but when you use the Rune, you're basically saying "I will not do harm, but I ask all heaven with its power etc. to stand between me and evil, to see that I am in the right."
Line 43:
* [[Cain and Abel]]: Madoc and Gwydyr. Another recurring motif.
* [[Call Back]]: The first chapter alludes to the tesseract and farandolae of the respective first two books.
* [[Can't Argue
* [[Combat
* [[Cool Horse]]: Gaudior
* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: At least, according to ''Planet'', that's the way things began.
* [[Dead Guy, Junior]]
* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: In Brandon's story, between the People of the Wind and the more liberal Welsh on the one hand, and the hardline Puritans on the other. This is partly what trips up Zylle during her interrogation by Mortmain.
* [[Demoted to Extra]]: Calvin, [[Put
* [[Disney Villain Death]]: Played straight with Gedder.
* [[Domestic Abuse]]: Heavily implied that Beezie's mother was a victim of it.
* [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!]]: Discussed by Matthew and Bran, one of whom is paralyzed and the other suffers from a permanently injured leg and [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|PTSD]].
* [[Evil Smells Bad]]: The Echthroi, as noted in ''[[A Wind in
* [[Faking the Dead]]: Gwydyr
* [[Foreshadowing]]: From the way Mrs. O'Keefe talks about him, you know something bad is going to happen to Chuck.
* [[For Want of a Nail]]: What they're trying to do, to avert WWIII.
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: It's heavily implied that Mortmain is making sexual advances at Beezie.
* [[The Generalissimo]]: "Mad Dog" Branzillo rules the fictional South American country Vespugia. The plot revolves around going back in time and changing events so that Branzillo becomes a benevolent ruler instead. {{spoiler|This turns out to have been temporary, however--by ''Troubling a Star'', which takes place perhaps twenty-odd years later, the benevolent version of Branzillo has been overthrown and Vespugia is back to being a troubled country with a distinctly military bent.}}
* [[Going Native]]: Madoc, a Welsh prince who joined the Wind People.
* [[Good Is Impotent]]: Somewhat averted. The "good" people are proactive, strong, and willing to face evil, at least to give it a stern talking-to. But the wicked people are tolerated in the communities because they're ''better at things'' - one woman who is racist against Indians is the best midwife in the village, and Gedder the evil sumbitch is able to teach others how to farm.
Line 64:
* [[Heroic Lineage]]: A big theme.
* [[Hidden Depths]]: From what you've barely heard about Mrs. O'Keefe in previous books, she sounds horrible. In this book, you find out how she got that way (and how she isn't so bad deep down).
* [[Hidden Elf Village]]: The Unicorn's hatching grounds, which is safe from
* [[I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy]]: Aww, Matthew.
* [[Identical Grandson]]: Matthew and Bran for Madoc, Chuck for Brandon.
* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming|Idiosyncratic Chapter Naming]]: Named after the verses of St. Patrick's Rune.
* [[
* [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]]: Tends to get invoked a lot with those of the Madoc line.
* [[Indian Maiden]]/[[The Chief's Daughter]]: Zyll and Zylle.
Line 75 ⟶ 76:
** Subverted with Calvin, though, whose ancestors, the O'Keefes, include a guy who flings homeless puppies to death against walls, and Paddy, who is implied to be cut from the same cloth as Mortmain.
* [[Kick the Dog]]: Jack O'Keefe kills homeless puppies by flinging them against the walls of barns.
▲* [[Lampshaded Double Entendre]]: Paddy's comment that Mortmain is "after" Beezie.
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]
* [[Love Makes You Evil]]: If you marry the wrong person, it can. Any kids you have with him/her will turn out evil as well.
* [[Meaningful Name]]: The names "Maddox", "Bran", "Zilla", and their variations. Also the various characters named "[[Obviously Evil|Mortmain]]", which means "dead hand" in French. And the first person that Charles Wallace mentally fuses with is named Harcels--an anagram of Charles.
* [[Mental Fusion]]: Going "Within", where Charles Wallace "fuses" with several people to influence events.
* [[Mighty Whitey]]: Madoc, though he has completely abandoned his Welsh homeland, and has no intention of ever returning.
Line 85:
* [[Nightmare Face]]: The creature Charles and Gaudior briefly encounter in a Projection.
* [[Noble Savage]]: The People of the Wind.
* [[A Nuclear Error]]: A nuclear exchange between Vespugia and the U.S. would not destroy the U.S. Nuclear weapons are difficult and expensive to make (you need the materials, for one thing), and the United States is an awfully big target, which would require several nukes to take out. (Ca. 2000, the PRC lacked the capacity to hit any more than the U.S.'s West Coast.) On the other hand, Vespugia is said to be about the size of
* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted with Mattie and Matthew, Richard, Ritchie, and Rich Llawcae, Brandon and his namesake nephew, David and Davey Higgins, and most impressively, Zyll, Zylle, Zillie, and Zillah. Then again, most of this has to do with history repeating itself.
* [[Pegasus]]: Gaudior. However, when he takes flight, he hardly ever moves in ''space,'' but only through time. (The movement of the planet Earth itself throughout time is not accounted for.)
Line 93:
* [[Seers]]: The people Charles merges with tend to have some sort of clairvoyance. Possibly justified due to Charles' presence in their psyches, the fact that they tend to be descendants of the same line, or perhaps that's why he can target them at all.
* [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]]
* [[She
* [[Sinister Minister]]: Pastor Mortmain
* [[Spell My Name
**
* [[Supporting Protagonist]]: On several levels: First, Charles Wallace is only going Within various people from the past, and only once is it explicit that he's even ''doing'' anything while being Within. Then, even when they finally reach 1863, {{spoiler|Charles Wallace is Within Matthew, who is having a vision of ''Richard,'' who is all the way in Vespugia, having the big fight with Gedder that the entire book has actually been building up to.}}
* [[Telepathy]]: "Kything". Also Gaudior's main form of communication.
Line 105:
* [[Twin Telepathy]]: Bran and Matthew Maddox.
* [[Two Lines, No Waiting]]: Meg's back at the house.
** Also [[Meanwhile in
* [[Unicorn]]: Gaudior. It deserves noting that he's ''very'' different from the unicorns depicted in ''[[Many Waters]]'' in the same world -- he's bigger, he's more reliably (albeit still not completely) real, and he's telepathic. And has magic.
* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: The book has been criticized for racism because its entire plot turns on a South American man having the right white ancestors. It also literally associates blue eyes (even in people of color) with innate goodness and dark eyes with corruption and evil and treats colonization by certain white families as benevolent rather than problematic. And then there's the whole [[Noble Savage]] trope...
* [[You Fail Physics Forever]]: Even a full-scale nuclear war would not even blow up a planet. It would "merely" turn a good portion of the world. (perhaps all of it) into an uninhabitable, or barely habitable, wasteland. The quote in the [[Artistic License Astronomy]] entry is especially curious, as the conversations with Sandy and Dennys, as well as the Projections, depict a more realistic result.
* [[War Is Hell]]: Bran's time as a Union soldier.
* [[Witch Hunt]]: A literal one targeting Zylle.
Line 116 ⟶ 117:
[[Category:A Swiftly Tilting Planet]]
[[Category:Literature]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swiftly Tilting Planet, A}}
| |||