A Wrinkle In Time-Part 1 [Blog post #3 from 7th grade Quest English]

A Wrinkle In Time expresses a lot of things many people are experiencing in life right now, including bullying, rejection, and the press of evil.  I connect to the main character Meg because I have also felt rejected, and people often think that there is something wrong with me, just like they did Meg and how they think of Charles Wallace.  I don't get beat up, and I don't really shout back and try to fight, but on the inside, when people talk behind my back and do other mean things, I am raging, like Meg.

And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother."  At this she'd thrown the books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye.

Meg has both physical and emotional conflict and stress in this story, as well as mental conflict, by way of her father missing and presumed dead, and her mother seems to be hiding something from Meg, Sandy, Dennys and Charles Wallace.  Meg's physical stresses and conflicts lie in her failing grades in school and her desire to strike back at the people who make her life miserable, causing her to get into even more trouble.  The failing grades and downgradement she receives from the other students add to her emotional stress and the conflicts in her life.

During lunch she'd rough-housed to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg, we aren't grammar-school kids any more.  Why do you always act like such a baby?"

I don't think that any other critical lens other than the Reader Response Theory would fit with this story, except maybe Structural Theory.  Throughout the book, I noticed that Meg's father is mentioned several times, and Meg's mother seems to avoid the subject of Meg's father every time.  Meg and her family also try to avoid mentioning Meg's father, and Meg gets angry every time someone asks after her father.

The postmistress must know that it was almost a year now since the last letter, and heaven knows how many people she'd told, or what unkind guesses she'd made about the reason for the long silence.  Mr. Jenkins waited for an answer, but Meg only shrugged."Just what was your father's line of business?" Mr. Jenkins asked.  "Some kind of scientist, wasn't he?""He is a physicist."  Meg bared her teeth to reveal the two ferocious lines of braces."Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?""I do face facts," Meg said.  "They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.""Then why don't you face facts about your father?""You leave my father out of it!" Meg shouted.

Her mother keeps trying to contact Mr. Murry, Meg's father, not wanting to give up on him, showing a kind of inner strength that only a few people have, but even she is getting discouraged.

"And you don't know where your father was sent?""No.  At first we got lots of letters.  Mother and Father always wrote each other every day.  I think Mother still writes him every night.  Every once in a while the postmistress makes some kind of a crack about all her letters.""I suppose they think she's pursuing him or something." Calvin said, rather bitterly.  "They can't understand plain, ordinary love when they see it.  Well, go on.  What happened next?""Nothing happened," Meg said.  "That's the trouble.""Well, what about your father's letters?""They just stopped coming.""You haven't heard anything at all?""No," Meg said.  "Nothing."  Her voice was heavy with misery.

Another thing I noticed was that Calvin is very insightful on many things, like love, for instance, as he said above about "plain, ordinary love" and what people think when they see it.  Charles Wallace also seems to be very bright and has almost a soul connection with everyone, because he knows what his sister Meg and his mother are doing, all the time.  He also says that he only listens to certain people, and some are harder to listen to than others.

The Structural Theory also makes this easier to understand.  It is told from Meg's side of story and what she is experiencing at any given moment (not first person), giving this story a more personal feel and makes you really want to help Meg find her father.  Meg does have a flashback at the beginning, reflecting on her father and what he had said to her about Meg and Charles Wallace being special and not like Sandy and Dennys.

"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father had once told her.  Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away.  "There's noting the matter with his mind.  He just does things in his own way and in his own time."

"I don't want him to grow up to be dumb like me," Meg had said. 

"Oh, my darling, you're not dumb," her father answered.  "You're like Charles Wallace.  Your development has to go at its own pace.  It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace." 

...

"IQ tests, you mean?" 

"Yes, some of them.""Is my IQ okay?" 

"More than okay." 

"What is it?" 

"That I'm not going to tell you.  But it assures me that both you and Charles Wallace will be able to do pretty much whatever you like when you grow up to yourselves.  You just wait till Charles Wallace starts to talk.  You'll see."

There is something about Meg and Charles Wallace that is different from Sandy and Dennys, who are both normal kids.  Meg and Charles Wallace are like me in the sense that they both don't go at the "normal" pace, just like me.  Ever since I was little, I have been kind of the "top" of my class gradewise.  I learned to read before Kindergarten.  Then I got into Quest, and now I am still ahead of other "normal" seventh graders.

In the book, it talks about a "Black Thing" that is covering all the worlds, and is overpowering some of them.  The Black Thing is equated to Darkness, and the light that fights it off as God.  At this point in the book I thought that it was very spiritual, and this is a great representation not only of the Christian faith, but also of the world we live in today.  We are all fighting against evil and darkness in our lives.  Power really does corrupt.

I liked it when the Murry's are all reunited in the end, and Meg's father is freed.  The tesseract that he first went into had accidentally sent him to the wrong place, and the people working with him were meddling with time, but they didn't know the correct way to use it, not like Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which, who have lived for years and years and are very good at tessering.

Part of this story (when the children land on Camazotz) could be classified as dystopian, because the world is controlled by IT, a giant brain, who makes everything equal and in sync.  IT even offers to let them join IT on Camazotz and become equal like everyone else, and ensnares Charles Wallace.  For IT, Camazotz is a utopia because everyone is under IT's control, with no say in the ruling of Camazotz whatsoever.

Look for part 2...

>bookhouse4