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May. 9th, 2014 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slammerkinbabeThe other day, I read Madeleine L’Engle’s Many Waters for the first time. I’d read the first three books in the Time Quintet, but when I was a kid I started Many Waters and was really bored almost immediately. Reading it as an adult, I wasn’t bored, but I was confused, because she decided to take on the topic of Noah and the flood and yet dodged all the challenging parts of the story. It’s not just that she doesn’t explore in any kind of depth the consequences or, really, any of the disturbing aspects of the idea of God wiping out the entire world. The characters who are fated to drown are drawn as not very nice people, but they’re not drawn so harshly as to make it seem okay that they’re all getting axed by God. But she basically passes that over without making the reader feel like the flood is anything particularly cruel. And then she sets up this thing where Noah’s daughters are not allowed on the ark, only his sons and their wives, which, I mean, is a seriously fucked-up detail. And she spends a lot of time painting one teenage daughter of Noah who is expected to drown in the flood. Which I liked, because it made the point that the flood was both capricious and cruel in drowning at least some people who weren’t dominated by evil. Except L’Engle, IMO, totally chickens out in the end and has the girl get beamed up to heaven before the flood starts. Seriously? You set up the play and then just walk away?
(Another issue: the twins remark several times that the flood was pointless because people are as evil now as they were then, but L'Engle doesn’t get into that in any depth either. And dude, that is such a good point.)
I know that a core aspect of L’Engle’s faith is that God is kind and merciful. Which is a vision of God I’ve always liked, but it’s also a vision that involves tossing out most of the Old Testament. And that’s fine by me, because I’m not someone who thinks the Bible is some sort of incontrovertible history/biography of God. My understanding of God casts a wider net, draws from different traditions. But if that’s not how L’Engle’s faith works, fine, cool. What I don’t get is her taking on one of the cruelest stories in the Bible and then refusing to address its cruelty. Why would you choose to write about the flood if you’re not going to engage with the emotional and moral implications of the story?
I saw the movie Noah in the theater and was actually kind of impressed by it, though Lord knows it wasn’t perfect (rock monsters, srsly?). But it didn’t pull its punches too much in confronting the horror of God’s killing everybody on the planet except for half a dozen people, and Noah’s single-mindedness in refusing to question the morality of every dictate he (thinks) he’s hearing from God is an interesting and, I think, illuminating take on the story. It wasn’t a movie that I was super-impressed by in the theater, but I find myself still thinking about it months after I saw it, so I guess it was doing something right. And I think the something was its willingness to face all the aspects of the story of the flood, including the troubling ones, honestly and thoughtfully.
I’m curious as to whether anybody reading this has read Many Waters and what their (your) thoughts are on it. I thought it was surprisingly facile for a Madeleine L’Engle novel, which was disappointing. But maybe I’m missing something.
(Another issue: the twins remark several times that the flood was pointless because people are as evil now as they were then, but L'Engle doesn’t get into that in any depth either. And dude, that is such a good point.)
I know that a core aspect of L’Engle’s faith is that God is kind and merciful. Which is a vision of God I’ve always liked, but it’s also a vision that involves tossing out most of the Old Testament. And that’s fine by me, because I’m not someone who thinks the Bible is some sort of incontrovertible history/biography of God. My understanding of God casts a wider net, draws from different traditions. But if that’s not how L’Engle’s faith works, fine, cool. What I don’t get is her taking on one of the cruelest stories in the Bible and then refusing to address its cruelty. Why would you choose to write about the flood if you’re not going to engage with the emotional and moral implications of the story?
I saw the movie Noah in the theater and was actually kind of impressed by it, though Lord knows it wasn’t perfect (rock monsters, srsly?). But it didn’t pull its punches too much in confronting the horror of God’s killing everybody on the planet except for half a dozen people, and Noah’s single-mindedness in refusing to question the morality of every dictate he (thinks) he’s hearing from God is an interesting and, I think, illuminating take on the story. It wasn’t a movie that I was super-impressed by in the theater, but I find myself still thinking about it months after I saw it, so I guess it was doing something right. And I think the something was its willingness to face all the aspects of the story of the flood, including the troubling ones, honestly and thoughtfully.
I’m curious as to whether anybody reading this has read Many Waters and what their (your) thoughts are on it. I thought it was surprisingly facile for a Madeleine L’Engle novel, which was disappointing. But maybe I’m missing something.
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Date: 2014-05-11 07:10 pm (UTC)The flood *was* a cruel thing. The notion that killing babies and toddlers (who are innocent, NOT evil), as well as however many hundreds of thousands of people who were basically doing only what they'd learned to do (God wasn't speaking to them, God was only really chatting with Noah, hello), is, frankly, genocidal. Same with Sodom and Gomorrah, unless I missed the bit where the children were saved.
As for Many Waters, it's not one of my favorite of her books, it's true. I appreciate that she gave Sandy and Dennys their own adventure but I wish it had been a little different...
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Date: 2014-05-11 07:12 pm (UTC)