Monday, November 16, 2015

Week 13: Literary Speculation

This week I read A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. A Wrinkle in Time is the story of Meg Murry, a young girl who is transported through time and space with her younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe to save her father a scientist, from the evil forces that hold him prisoner on another planet. At the beginning of the book, Meg is a homely, awkward, but loving girl, troubled by anxiety and her concern for her father, who has been missing for over a year. The plot begins with the arrival of Mrs. Whatsit at the Murry house on a dark and stormy evening. Although she looks like a hobo, she is actually a supernatural creature with the ability to read Meg's thoughts. She startles Meg's mother by reassuring her of the existence of a tesseract--a sort of "wrinkle" in space and time. It is through the tesseract that Meg and her companions travel through the fifth dimension in search of Mr. Murry.

The concept statement of this book is basically "Love conquers all." We see this when IT possesses Charles Wallace, but Meg uses love (which she realized could help after being in the arms of Aunt Beast) to drive IT away out of Charles. 

Another theme is that sometimes complete symmetry/rhythm can be extremely creepy. Imagine walking onto a street in which all houses look EXACTLY the same, and all the kids playing on the street are doing the EXACT same thing and the EXACT same time. And if they mess up, it looks like someone just died horribly. Kinda got an image? Now imagine a whole WORLD of that. Its unbelievable and unimaginable. If you want you can also imagine that everyone on this godforsaken planet has a brain controlled by another HUGE disembodied brain which knows nothing of love. Weird.

I also really appreciated the addition of the fourth and fifth dimension in this book. I've always found that type of thing really interesting, and I love reading about theories about it. Its even more fascinating that its pretty much possible if we had the means to do it. I've also always wondered if it could somehow be done and if we could travel really far away.

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