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It'd have been a lot easier if I could have gone on hating him
This is a found post. As in, I found it on my desktop; it's at least three years old and I don't know why I never put it up, except that it didn't have a title and it didn't have music and I can't tell if I forgot about it or just decided nobody would care. There are half-finished, half-started livejournal fragments all over this machine. They weren't a good sign. Anyway. This is a form of clean-up. Here.
There are several reasons A Wind in the Door (1973) is my favorite of Madeleine L'Engle's original Murry books, a few being the singular cherubim, the idea of kything, the deep-eddying undersea of Yadah, and the statement that "Love isn't feeling," which I associated then and still with Le Guin's concept of ontá.1 But a significant contributor to its imprint on me as a child, and one which only came into focus for me a few years ago, is the character of Mr. Jenkins. Everyone be surprised.
Unlike Meg, or Calvin, or Charles Wallace, Mr. Jenkins is not at all marked out as a main character. He doesn't even look at first as though he'll be anything more than unpleasant background detail. We know him through Meg, who doesn't like him and doesn't have any reason to: he's the epitome of every small-minded administrator who ever made a gifted child's life hell. Kicked downstairs from his principalship at the high school because he could neither inspire his students nor discipline them, equally incapable of maintaining order at the lower levels, he seems to view any disruption of school routine as a personal attack and reacts accordingly—it is not his business to fix anything, because that would imply he let it get broken in the first place. Charles Wallace's classmates are using the much smaller, much smarter boy as a punching bag on a daily basis and Mr. Jenkins doesn't seem inclined to interfere so long as the Drs. Murry don't personally turn up to make him make them stop. Meg does make an appointment, but he brushes her off. He appears to have no kindness in him and less imagination and when he is duplicated and impersonated by two of the Echthroi ("Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate") it comes as almost no surprise to the reader; he seems the perfect host for their purposes, one of the many human beings who in their small, quiet, banal ways make this world a worse place to live.
So it becomes Meg's test to Name him, to distinguish which of these three repugnant doppelgängers is the real Mr. Jenkins, and she despairs of being able to tell: what about him is real to her? He makes her life miserable. He's frightened of snakes. He's nearsighted enough to wear glasses and he smells like old hair cream and there is always dandruff on the shoulders of his shabby suit. He might as well be wet cardboard to her, and in order to Name him, she must be able to love him: not as she loves Calvin or her family or even the fire-pluming, thousand-eyed, winged cherubim Proginoskes, but simply because he is another person, existing, valid; she has to be able to hold her hand out in the dark. (That's also Le Guin: it's the phrase I remember most from "Nine Lives" (1969). I have found it eternally useful.) And what still interests me about this process of Naming is that while Meg does eventually learn that Mr. Jenkins is responsible for at least one good act in his life—he bought Calvin his first decent pair of shoes, clumsily trying to pass them off as a used pair of his own—that is not what tilts the balance. At the heart of things, she's able to differentiate the real Mr. Jenkins from his two daemonic impostors because the one is too successful and the other too kind: only the Mr. Jenkins who really doesn't like children and can barely handle his humiliating job and forgets himself and swears on the playground when confronted with the immense and sanguine blacksnake Louise the Larger—the one that's badly flawed—human—is the real one.2 And I love that. Even after he's made the surprising decision to follow Meg, Calvin, Proginoskes and their Teacher into the green-dark otherworld of Charles Wallace's mitochondria (saying only, simply, that Meg Named him, so he'll come), he doesn't suddenly become a warmer or more spiritually centered person. He remains a short-sighted, middle-aged, rather rabbity-looking elementary school principal whose first attempts at kything are as dry and vague as old chalk dust and who still isn't quite sure he's not losing his mind. He is himself. I've been able to tag some of my early comedic-still-real models, but Mr. Jenkins might have been the first character about whom I was made to realize: hey, you know, people you don't like are people, too . . .
1. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971): "She knew what she felt, and what therefore he must feel. She was confident of it: there is only one emotion, or state of being, that can thus wholly reverse itself, polarize, within one moment. In Great Hainish indeed there is one word, ontá, for love and for hate. She was not in love with Osden, of course, that was another kettle of fish. What she felt for him was ontá, polarized hate."
2. There is surely some existential horror not just in seeing oneself impossibly doubled, but seeing impossible doubles that seem to be better and better-organized people.
And for a further L'Engle connection: happy birthday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior! Rabbit, rabbit, my best cousin. More joy.
There are several reasons A Wind in the Door (1973) is my favorite of Madeleine L'Engle's original Murry books, a few being the singular cherubim, the idea of kything, the deep-eddying undersea of Yadah, and the statement that "Love isn't feeling," which I associated then and still with Le Guin's concept of ontá.1 But a significant contributor to its imprint on me as a child, and one which only came into focus for me a few years ago, is the character of Mr. Jenkins. Everyone be surprised.
Unlike Meg, or Calvin, or Charles Wallace, Mr. Jenkins is not at all marked out as a main character. He doesn't even look at first as though he'll be anything more than unpleasant background detail. We know him through Meg, who doesn't like him and doesn't have any reason to: he's the epitome of every small-minded administrator who ever made a gifted child's life hell. Kicked downstairs from his principalship at the high school because he could neither inspire his students nor discipline them, equally incapable of maintaining order at the lower levels, he seems to view any disruption of school routine as a personal attack and reacts accordingly—it is not his business to fix anything, because that would imply he let it get broken in the first place. Charles Wallace's classmates are using the much smaller, much smarter boy as a punching bag on a daily basis and Mr. Jenkins doesn't seem inclined to interfere so long as the Drs. Murry don't personally turn up to make him make them stop. Meg does make an appointment, but he brushes her off. He appears to have no kindness in him and less imagination and when he is duplicated and impersonated by two of the Echthroi ("Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate") it comes as almost no surprise to the reader; he seems the perfect host for their purposes, one of the many human beings who in their small, quiet, banal ways make this world a worse place to live.
So it becomes Meg's test to Name him, to distinguish which of these three repugnant doppelgängers is the real Mr. Jenkins, and she despairs of being able to tell: what about him is real to her? He makes her life miserable. He's frightened of snakes. He's nearsighted enough to wear glasses and he smells like old hair cream and there is always dandruff on the shoulders of his shabby suit. He might as well be wet cardboard to her, and in order to Name him, she must be able to love him: not as she loves Calvin or her family or even the fire-pluming, thousand-eyed, winged cherubim Proginoskes, but simply because he is another person, existing, valid; she has to be able to hold her hand out in the dark. (That's also Le Guin: it's the phrase I remember most from "Nine Lives" (1969). I have found it eternally useful.) And what still interests me about this process of Naming is that while Meg does eventually learn that Mr. Jenkins is responsible for at least one good act in his life—he bought Calvin his first decent pair of shoes, clumsily trying to pass them off as a used pair of his own—that is not what tilts the balance. At the heart of things, she's able to differentiate the real Mr. Jenkins from his two daemonic impostors because the one is too successful and the other too kind: only the Mr. Jenkins who really doesn't like children and can barely handle his humiliating job and forgets himself and swears on the playground when confronted with the immense and sanguine blacksnake Louise the Larger—the one that's badly flawed—human—is the real one.2 And I love that. Even after he's made the surprising decision to follow Meg, Calvin, Proginoskes and their Teacher into the green-dark otherworld of Charles Wallace's mitochondria (saying only, simply, that Meg Named him, so he'll come), he doesn't suddenly become a warmer or more spiritually centered person. He remains a short-sighted, middle-aged, rather rabbity-looking elementary school principal whose first attempts at kything are as dry and vague as old chalk dust and who still isn't quite sure he's not losing his mind. He is himself. I've been able to tag some of my early comedic-still-real models, but Mr. Jenkins might have been the first character about whom I was made to realize: hey, you know, people you don't like are people, too . . .
1. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971): "She knew what she felt, and what therefore he must feel. She was confident of it: there is only one emotion, or state of being, that can thus wholly reverse itself, polarize, within one moment. In Great Hainish indeed there is one word, ontá, for love and for hate. She was not in love with Osden, of course, that was another kettle of fish. What she felt for him was ontá, polarized hate."
2. There is surely some existential horror not just in seeing oneself impossibly doubled, but seeing impossible doubles that seem to be better and better-organized people.
And for a further L'Engle connection: happy birthday,
gaudior! Rabbit, rabbit, my best cousin. More joy.
no subject
That was a brilliant exploration of Mr. Jenkins. Reading it, and thinking about reading A Wind in the Door again and again over the years, I think what your essay does for me is make me realize how Mr. Jenkins has represented for me not the humanity of people I disliked but rather the heroism of unremarkable people (obviously the two things can go together quite well). I guess it's the other side of the banality of evil: the profundity of small, dry goodness.
no subject
You should write about that. I find it striking, but I don't know if it altered me. The line from that scene that stayed with me was: "A small white feather which was not a feather floated through the cold."
To be faced with the better yous whom you are not, and have those better yous be agents of hell. Yikes.
That's one of the points that only struck me years later on re-read. It would disturb me.
That was a brilliant exploration of Mr. Jenkins.
Thank you!
I can write nearly endlessly about characters that interest me, but I am never sure whether the rest of my friendlist feels the same way about reading them.
I guess it's the other side of the banality of evil: the profundity of small, dry goodness.
Yes. Which is also something I care about, although I think I learned it from other characters first.
about the song
So here is the abbreved version. The song changed me because it showed me how I, too, could participate in the creation of the universe (the way Meg does by singing the song), and that deadly negating evil could be fought by a call to join in the dance. It's better than turning the other cheek. It's, "Oh, you want to destroy me? How about instead you become sea sand and solar system?"
Also, it deeply *moved* me because it's a portrait in miniature of the universe (through the naming of sample constituent parts). It's a mandala in song. You know how Meg realizes that size doesn't matter and she can hold the baby star in her hand? Reading that song is like holding the universe in my hand.
no subject
I'm sorry Livejournal felt the need to inflict a moral lesson on you, but that's beautifully stated.
Re: about the song
I have a very vivid memory of reading it for the first time when I was thirteen or so, standing on a street corner waiting for a bus and feeling very in tune with the world around me. I'd read and reread Wrinkle when I was much younger and was delighted to be visiting old friends again.
no subject
I can remember reading A Wrinkle in Time for the first time, because my mother began reading it to me. I associate A Swiftly Tilting Planet with the old, dark-green, cat-clawed couch in the apartment on Appleton Street. I can't remember where I read A Wind in the Door.
no subject