Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Copyright: 1962
Copy: Paperback from the Friends of the Kaneohe Library.
Gist: Meg and her savant brother Charles Wallace wonder where the heck their father has gone. He seems to have disappeared while working for the government and no one knows exactly what he was doing. Strangers show up on a dark and stormy night and take the children to a distant planet to help rescue their father. Come to find out baby brother Charles Wallace has a special ability to read people in a curious way and Meg has a special ability that is not totally explained during the book. The kids experience new worlds, new dimensions, time travel, and an evil pulsing brain that tries to take away their freedom of choice.
My Ideas: This is one of the earliest novels I can remember having ever read. Possibly as early as 4th grade. I remember being so impressed with my older sister when she told me she could read the whole thing in one sitting – I wanted to be just like her one day. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this book, like time travel, shape shifting old ladies, reading people’s minds, and distant planets being surrounded by an evil misty darkness that can make you numb and likely freeze to death. I want to write about two specific ideas in this book: (1) the beasts with no eyes and (2) IT’s drive to take away peoples choice.
Beasts With No Eyes
At one point in the text Meg, Charles Wallace, and their father get stranded on some unknown planet and are nursed back to health and protected by hairy tentacled beasts with no eyes. They have indentations where their eyes should be, but they have no perception of light. When they first meet Meg and her family the beasts struggle to fully communicate because Meg and her family describe things as they are seen, but the beasts describe things “as they are.”
I found this scene extremely interesting. The beasts find sight, as Meg and her family describe it, as somewhat limiting while Meg and her family cannot understand how the beasts survive without seeing light, the sun, other individuals or objects. The beasts suggest they are able to “see” things as they truly are without vision influencing their actions. They suggest that vision would only distort the reality of a person or object. Appearances do not describe or effectively expose a person or object as they really are it seems.
This made me ask myself the question: how does light and our visual perception distort they way we understand things? I found this a truly stimulating concept. Fat people would no longer be considered ugly by our society, skin color would no longer lead to racism, physical deformities would not marginalize an individual, and concepts of human beauty would totally change. How limiting is sight! It seems that sight has caused Man to judge people, situations, and objects improperly. This also made me consider how bound we are by light to this planet.
I am not a scientist, and to be honest I hated science and chemistry all through school. However, as I understand it light determines time. If we could travel away from the earth at the speed of light, time would appear to stand still because light would not be able to travel to our eyes fast enough to show us the progression of time. So in essence, we are bound to this planet’s time and progress by light. It binds us to the earth and determines our perception of reality. Time is only determined by our perception of light as we receive it. So, would it be better to not have eyes or sight? Would Man more fully understand reality if we were not distracted by time or vision?
Don’t misinterpret what I’m suggesting here. I am not saying we should poke out our eyes to better understand the world around us. I’m simply trying to make the point that light and sight often misguide us in our perception of reality and beauty. In many ways it seems we’d be better off blind or without sight as the beasts in A Wrinkle in Time. But how I would miss seeing my children smile, or the sun setting, or a beautiful painting, or a friend laughing. For now, I think I’ll keep my eyes and remain bound to this earth.
IT’s Drive to Take Away People’s Choice
In the book there is an evil IT that seeks to remove people’s ability to choose. IT suggests that life is much easier if all decisions are willfully given up and given to IT. As a result, all children bounce their ball at the same time every day and in rhythm. All mothers walk out and call their children home for dinner at the same time. Everyone does everything the same and no one has the freedom to choose what they consider is best for themselves. No one is sick, unemployed, or unhappy.
Since this book was written in the 60’s it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it was influenced by the historical narratives of repressive regimes like Hitler in Germany, Pol-pot in Cambodia, Stalin in Russia, or Mao in China. I think L’Engle is making a comparison to communism when she describes the planet where IT has full sway and all the people there have given up their freedom to choose to IT. People’s inability to determine when they bounce their ball or when they go to work is supposed to be a throw back to these totalitarian regimes.
There is a lot to say with regards to what L’Engle could have meant or what she really did say metaphorically with this text. But I have something else I’d like to say in regards to these ideas. My comment has to do with freedom. IT believed people were happier when they had absolutely no choice. The other extreme says that people are actually totally happy when they can choose whatever they want without any rules or boundaries. My suggestion is that we are most happy when we have freedom within limits. I find that most people are happy when they can do whatever they want within a simple framework. No one really likes to give up their identity by turning over their freedom to a dictatorship and no one is really happy when anarchy rules and there is no limitations to people’s action. Let me make a musical metaphoric connection.
I’ve recently taken on the slogan “create moments” after having listened to Tom Jackson on a podcast. Anyone who knows me personally knows I play in a band and have been since I was 17. Tom talked about creating moments that your audience will remember while you’re on stage and not just playing your music – otherwise you’re just being a jukebox. In order to really create those magical and influential moments onstage I have to intentionally structure opportunities where my band and me can be spontaneously creative and free to do whatever we like. My freedom to be creative is increased only when I create the conditions under which it can be possible. If my band and I all came on stage and started playing solos simultaneously no one would be interested and we’d be considered a failure. But, if we create a situation, structure a song so that spontaneous free flowing solos can happen, then we really can influence a crowd and bring about a meaningful moment. We can musically be totally free in these structured moments. This is how I understand freedom. This is how I understand creativity. It is only when we create a situation, government, song, home, school, business, church, or what have you, that guarantees freedom within those structures can we come close to happiness and freedom. Oppressive regimes remove all opportunities to create moments or have freedom. Archaic situations remove all sense of structure or limits. Both extremes are flawed in my opinion. It is only by having limits that we can experience great freedom, joy, creativity, and happiness.
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I know that my ideas seem to jump around a bit, but that’s how I like it. I enjoy writing things as they come to my mind and hope that I’m able to craft them in a way that’s understandable and enjoyable to anyone who is reading.
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