A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle

First published: 1980

Type of work: Fantasy/moral tale

Themes: Death, love and romance, the supernatural, family, and animals

Time of work: The late twentieth century

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: An island off the New England coast

Principal Characters:

• Vicky Austin, nearly sixteen, a budding poet
• Leo Rodney, her friend, whose father has just died
• Zachary Gray, her friend, a wealthy, sophisticated young man with suicidal tendencies
• Adam Eddington, her friend, a college student doing research with bottlenose dolphins
• Grandfather, a wise, world-traveled minister who is dying of leukemia
• Mrs. Austin, Vicky’s mother
• Dr. Austin, her father, a physician
• John, ,
• Suzy, and
• Rob, her siblings

The Story

A Ring of Endless Light begins with a funeral: The Austin family joins in the mourning of Commander Jack Rodney, a Coast Guard officer who died of a heart attack after rescuing a young man who had foolishly taken a boat out in a storm. Vicky Austin and her family arrived at Seven Bay Island with death already on their minds: Mrs. Austin’s father has leukemia, and it is evident that this will be their last summer with him. Grandfather, a minister, officiates at Commander Rodney’s funeral, and his actions introduce themes important throughout the book: faith and honesty in the face of death. Quietly but firmly rejecting the green plastic carpet and vial of dirt offered by the funeral directors, he thus refuses to let them prettify or sentimentalize the Rodneys’ tragic loss.

After the funeral, Vicky meets Adam Eddington, a college sophomore who works with her brother John on a summer project at the nearby Marine Biology Station. Intense and intelligent, Adam is drawn to Vicky and asks that she assist him with his research on bottlenose dolphins. Vicky is intrigued by Adam and, accustomed to dating very little, is nonplussed to find that two other young men are soon pursuing her as well: Leo Rodney, the commander’s son, a rather awkward boy whose good-heartedness she learns to value; and Zachary Gray, whom she had met during a family vacation the previous summer. Handsome and worldly, Zachary simultaneously flatters Vicky and confuses her with his emotional dependence. He proves to be the youth rescued by Commander Rodney; his foolhardiness with the boat was motivated by a death wish.

At her parents’ request, Vicky has refused a job offer in order to help care for her grandfather. Her summer routine, however, quickly becomes busy: reading to Grandfather, housework alongside Mother, Mondays with Leo, Wednesdays with Adam, and Saturdays with Zach. She brings Grandfather her questions about love and the possibility of meaning in suffering; she picnics with Leo, helps him grieve, and fends off his fumbling romantic advances; she goes to the country club and a charming French restaurant with Zachary, finds his kisses wonderful, but cannot bring herself to trust him.

Adam introduces Vicky to Basil, a dolphin he has befriended in the open sea; eventually, Basil brings along a female dolphin and her pup: Vicky christens them Norberta and Njord. Vicky discovers that she has an immediate mystical rapport with the dolphins, a profound empathy that permits her to communicate wordlessly with them. Her silent requests—“Can you do a cartwheel?” or “Swim out to the horizon and then turn around and come back”—structure their play; on a deeper level, the dolphins minister comfort to her and fill her mind with images of the dance at the heart of the universe.

Vicky grieves for her grandfather, whose mind is becoming more confused as his cancer progresses. Hemorrhaging, he is rushed to the hospital on the mainland for a blood transfusion. Vicky follows Grandfather and her parents to the emergency room, and it is there that the story’s young men reveal their true colors: Zachary becomes agitated and abandons her; Leo proves a sturdy friend; and Adam, awakened from sleep by her silent scream of anguish, finds a way across the channel to join her.

In the emergency room, Vicky cradles a little girl, Binnie, while the child’s mother anxiously seeks a nurse to help them. Binnie has a seizure and dies in Vicky’s arms. Vicky subsides into shock. Adam takes her home; when she finally awakens, all her family’s loving ministrations cannot pierce the covering of dark despair that has fallen over her. At last Adam takes her out into the ocean, where Basil, Norberta, Njord, and their whole pod surround her, rubbing up against her, pushing her underwater, healing her with their joy, and finally rising on their flukes to sing an oddly angelic chorus whose music reminds Vicky of the alleluias at Commander Rodney’s funeral.

Context

A Ring of Endless Light is part of a series of Austin family stories, beginning with Meet the Austins (1960), which was followed by The Moon by Night (1963). The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas (1964) returns to an earlier time, when Vicky is seven years old. Adam Eddington also appears in an earlier book, a thriller entitled The Arm of the Starfish (1965); in that book he is associated with Dr. O’Keefe, who is introduced as the boy Calvin O’Keefe in A Wrinkle in Time (1962), L’Engle’s most famous work. L’Engle weaves her characters’ lives together most intricately: Zachary Gray, too, appears in other books, not only The Moon by Night, where he meets Vicky, but also A House Like a Lotus (1984) and An Acceptable Time (1989), in which he makes friends with Polly O’Keefe, the daughter of Calvin.

The esteem in which L’Engle’s writing is now held belies her early struggles as a writer. During the 1950’s her works were rejected by publisher after publisher. In 1963, however, A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Award. L’Engle became a celebrated author, and over the years it became popular among writers for children to delve into grim realities, the dark side of life: divorce, racism, sexual deviance, and death. Yet L’Engle has kept to her own course. Although her novels are grounded in suffering, she cannot be categorized with Judy Blume and other contemporaries who write of adolescent pain.

The difference lies in L’Engle’s embrace of the metaphysical, the supernatural perhaps as a reaction to the “spiritual repression” of the twentieth century. “If we are not going to deny our children the darker side of life, we owe it to them to show them that there is also this wild brilliance, this light of the sun: although we cannot look at it directly, it is nevertheless by the light of the sun that we see.”

Of all her works for children, A Ring of Endless Light is perhaps most daring in piling pain upon pain; yet it also affords the reader L’Engle’s sun-drenched vision at its clearest. It is a Christian hope, one expressed less in theological terms than in images, such as the deceptively simple one with which the book closes: “I moved toward him and we were both caught and lifted in the light.”

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Women Writers of Children’s Literature. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1998.

Chase, Carole F. Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L’Engle and Her Writing. Philadelphia: Innisfree Press, 1998.

Hein, Rolland. Christian Mythmakers: C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, J. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, Dante Alighieri, John Bunyan, Walter Wangerin, Robert Siegel, and Hannah Hurnard. Chicago: Cornerstone Press, 2002.

Hettinga, Donald R. Presenting Madeleine L’Engle. New York: Twayne, 1993.

Shaw, Luci, ed. The Swiftly Tilting Worlds of Madeleine L’Engle. Wheaton, Ill.: Harold Shaw, 1998.