A Wrinkle in Time

It seems like everyone else in the world, my younger brother included, has read A Wrinkle in Time at one point or another, likely in elementary school. Almost everyone I talk to has either fond childhood memories of this great adventure story or memories of the frustration and boredom often experienced by children reading a "big" book for the first time. In this sense I feel like I may have had an advantage in that I had never heard of the novel before signing up for this course. Being unbiased by childhood opinions (whether they be good or bad) likely helped me to view the characters and references in the novel from a more adult perspective, rather than being influenced by nostalgia.

I found it interesting that, as we discussed in class, this book was banned by various Christian schools for opposing Christian values. While I definitely did note the religious undertones when I read the book for the first time, I never noted anything directly offensive to such values in the text. At first, I just assumed that the novel was written by a Christian author at a time when the religion was the norm and any deviation from Christian faith was seen as abnormal. I thought that the time and context in which it was written was likely one in which references to God in mainstream media were common and generally unquestioned.

However, as we began to discuss that various arguments about whether or not the text should be viewed as pro-Christian, I began to notice details that made me feel otherwise. The one thing that stood out to me the most in this novel (or made my scientific mind want to cry out "THIS CAN NOT BE PLAUSIBLE!") is the fact that every life form on every planet seems to believe in the same God. Although the various inhabitants of different worlds look, act and live completely differently, God is mentioned by several characters (most notably the three witches) in the most casual way. The existence and worship of one specific god by all inhabitants of all worlds is presented as an unquestioned truth, and no one is even surprised by it. I found this odd, as the main characters repeatedly question the methods and plausibility of time travel (for which physics can provide a rational explanation), but none ever note or question how the same deity has seemingly presented himself on all worlds.

Though this could be seen as a demonstration of the novel's pro-Christian themes, I felt that it might be important in relation to the "darkness" that takes over Camazots and threatens Earth. Someone said in class on Thursday that the residents of Camazots could be seen as a metaphor for the lack of individuality and freedom faced by a Godless society. When I first read this, I however felt differently. It seemed to me that Camazots and its inhabitants could be a metaphor for the consequences of blind trust in organized religion. The people of the planet resign themselves to a life where they take no responsibility for their actions, make no decisions, and rely on one central, immortal intelligent being to make their decisions and map out the course of their life. IT is the source of all information, guidance and power. This could easily be compared to the way some members of organized religious groups fail to take responsibility for their own actions because of a belief that every action and outcome in their lives are a product of fate rather than free will.

I can see how, when looking at the unquestioning acceptance of God by all major characters in the book, juxtaposed with the fact that they are being threatened by a being which intends to remove their free will, the novel can be interpreted as having an anti-Christian theme. However, it still seems somewhat ridiculous to me that it was banned by so many schools. Even if a school has a strict policy against literature that is deemed offensive to Christian values, A Wrinkle in Time does not even have an outright or definite anti-Christian theme. I can't help but wonder how many elementary students would even pick up on the questionable metaphors that the adults argue so much about.