Think Before You Marry
Essentially, this is book is about whether or not a man will become a genocidal despotic tyrant or a benevolent leader. And that fates comes down to whether a groom’s bride is named Zillie or Zillah and whether a bride’s groom is named Gedder or Rich. Of course, a great big chunk of the story is a complicated plot serves to determine whether which of those marriages actually takes place, but the theme remains nevertheless universal since almost all marriages are dependent upon a complicated interwoven network of fate. The lesson is abundantly clear: think long and hard before you marry and consider the consequences of making the wrong choice when there are so very man alternatives that remain possible.
Nuke the Nukes
The central plot of the novel is about Charles Wallace’s mission to save the world from nuclear annihilation currently in the hands of a genocidal South American despot. The important part of that sentence is not what you might think it is. The identify of the particular genocidal despot is the issue, thematically speaking. The issue is that the world is facing the threat of global annihilation at the hands of a despot in control of a South American nation. But here’s the deal: no country in South America has ever had access to a nuclear arsenal. So this becomes a work of speculative fiction in which the Cold War-era proliferation of nuclear weapons had gone so far off the rails than even South American countries—with their long history of political instability caused by overly ambition dictators—had become nuclear powers.
What Is Reality?
Everything depends on those two marriages. The wrong choices takes the world to the brink of annihilation because eventually that world comes to known the horror of man it will nickname Mad Dog. To avert this disaster, the past has to be changed. One way to do this, of course, would simply be to take advantage of this ability and kill Mad Dog before he starts toying around with nuclear weapons. The story, however, revolves around the much more subtle approach that alters the course of history in such a way that this man still exists, but takes a path that leads him to becoming, symbolically speaking, a Good Dog. And even the people who lived through the original course of history have no memory that this good guy was once a genocidal despot steering them all toward the end of the world as we know with nobody left to feel fine. Since both timelines actually happen, which one is real? More to the point: how sure are you that what you call reality isn’t the result of time-traveling tinkerers? Ever get that strange sense of déjà vu that you’ve experience something before only in a slightly different way?
