Thoughts from A Wrinkle in Time

I have mixed feeling about the book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle. I thought there were some excellent elements to the book but at the same time there were parts of the book that just did not make sense. My favorite part of the novel was the part on the planet Ixchel with the beasts that could not see. I found this part to be fascinating. How do you explain sight to something that has never seen and whose society is not built on the concept of sight? This part emphasized how much of our communication is based on sight and how limiting that can be. It made me wonder how much more rich our lives would be if we did not rely on sight to describe our experiences but on our feelings. I found the part where Meg was trying to explain who Mrs. W's were through their appearance to be especially interesting. It made me realize how much we, as humans, define ourselves by appearance and what we see. Once again, I think the world would be much more different if we focused on who each other was on the inside rather than our outward appearance. Friends of my family who are from England often advocated school uniforms for that reason. They said that wearing a school uniform equalized everyone and prevented people from focusing on your outward appearance and more on who you actually are. I think that this concept is quite important and advanced and I find it amazing that was brought up in a book that most people read in the third grade. It makes me wish I had read it at a younger age. I wonder if I would have approached life differently because of it or would the important concepts it brings forth been lost on me? It also made me wonder what our definition of freaks would be on a planet without sight. If we could not see someone's deformed or different appearance how would we define freaks? I think people would define freaks based on their approach to life and how they acted rather than on their appearance. However, on a planet without sight would being different really be that important and would be people strive as hard to be freaky?

There were two parts of this book that I really did not enjoy. The first was the romance between Meg and Calvin. I did not really see the point of it except for the fact that it most likely enhanced many young girls misconceptions about relationships and boys. It was extremely unrealistic that the most popular boy in school would like to nerdiest girl almost instantaneously. I understand that this is a children's book and that a little love story makes it more fun to read but I just saw no point to having the love story in the plot. I did not advance it what so ever. Perhaps it would have been useful if it had helped Meg come to her realization that love would defeat IT, but most interestingly Calvin was the only person NOT mentioned in that part (pg 228). Therefore, except for the reason that the love story would atract young girl readers I really think that this whole plot line could have been removed from the book without taking away from the narrative.

I also disliked the ending of the novel. It felt like it lacked a proper denouement and that things were left hanging. I sensed that the author was not really sure how to end the novel so she just ended it quickly and was sloppy about it. The black shadow hanging over earth was not really addressed again and it would have been nice to have something to wrap that up. I suppose the author meant for us to take the message that love will fight evil from Meg defeating IT as a way to defeat the Black Thing. However, with how rushed the ending was I felt like this was a little lost, and I wonder if younger readers would have caught on to that.