The big kitchen of the Murrys' house was bright and warm, curtains drawn against the dark outside, against the rain driving past the house from the northeast. Meg Murry O'Keefe had made an arrangement of chrysanthemums for the dining table, and the yellow, bronze, and pale-gold blossoms seemed to add light to the room. A delectable smell of roasting turkey came from the oven, and her mother stood by the stove, stirring the giblet gravy.
The opening line of the novel situates the setting. But for those in the know, it does much more than that; it is like traveling through a time tunnel. Those in the know are the ones who know that this is a novel in a series. They also will quickly be able to discern that this entry in the series takes place a decade following the conclusion of the previous book. The Murry family is at the center of the narrative; they are the primary protagonists which have been the center of attention and remain the center of attention throughout this book.
Perhaps it was his gift of kything practiced with Meg that helped Charles Wallace slip more and more deeply into the being of another.
Kything plays a major role in the book and it was in the previous installment that this gift was exploited. Kything allows secretive communications between Meg and Charles (among others who also have been so gifted) through telepathy. Obviously, since this is a fantasy series, kything is no merely restricted to the role of communications device. It is a genetic ability that ties the present back to the past and becomes a commentary on evolution and genetic identification as it relates to such grand old concepts as prejudice and hate.
"Let's see. Nothing in 1866, 1867. 1868, here we are, The Horn of Joy."
More than a few commentators and critics have compared The Horn of Joy in this book to what Alfred Hitchcock termed the “MacGuffin” in his movies. A MacGuffin is that thing which somebody is after desperately in in the plot, but which turns out to be of little substantive value for the audience. (For instance, the money Marion Crane steals in Psycho which is the driving thrust of the entire first half of the film but which sinks to the bottom of the swamp along with corpse, completely unknown to her killer.) The Horn of Joy plays a much more substantial role in the interest of the characters than it will wind up being worth. Within the world of the novel, The Horn of Joy is forwarded as possibly the “first American science fiction novel” ever written.
