Paperspine Blog

I am a dork. Not just sort of a dork, but a HUGE dork. My husband tells me that I’m a cute dork, but a dork nonetheless. And this isn’t a recent thing. Nope, I’ve been a huge dork since childhood. Maybe that’s part of why I loved A Wrinkle in Time so much.

The main character, Meg, is, yes, a bit of a dork and a bit of an outcast, and yet she gets to go on an amazing adventure. She, her little brother, Charles Wallace, and the popular-jock from school, Calvin, all set out to find Meg’s father, Mr. Murry, who hasn’t been heard from in quite some time. With the help of Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit, they arrive on the planet Camazotz where IT has Mr. Murray imprisoned. IT wants to eliminate free will. On Camazotz everything is strictly regulated. Children bounce their balls with the same rhythm and the mothers open their doors to call the children in all at exactly the same time. Go against IT and risk consequences – pain, reprocessing, and sometimes death. The children, of course, must fight against IT, to save Mr. Murry and ultimately to save themselves.

One of the things that I always liked about this story was that one of the “gifts” that Meg was given to fight IT was her faults. Likewise, after Charles Wallace falls under IT’s influence while attempting to rescue their father, it is her greatest strength, love, that frees all of them. 

I’ve been told that some people object to this book because it has Christian undertones (what’s funny about that, btw, is that some of Christians refuse to read the book, saying that it has pagan undertones). As an adult, I see the “religious messages” behind the book more than I did as a kid and, maybe, if it was my first time reading the book, it would have bothered me. I do still enjoy reading Many Waters – a book about Meg’s brothers, Dennys and  Sandys – and it’s very obvious, and was also obvious to my much-younger-self, that is has a religious background – so perhaps I wouldn’t have been bothered. I’ll never know. Frankly, I don’t care if I would have been bothered by it or not: reading is as much about our own background, knowledge, and experiences as it is about the story. Every book touches each person differently, depending on who they are. This book affected me greatly and still does each time that I read it. It’s a great story and I have a good time reading it. And isn’t that the ultimate goal of fiction?