"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

This is an essay I wrote for a literature class. As such, this isn't a normal review, but I will stick a star rating and videogame rating on the end. Also, this review is part of my first completed quest.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

 In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle demonstrates just how bad it would be if everything was exactly the same and points out the importance of being your own person, against a backdrop of science fiction.

The book’s characters visit multiple different planets over the course of the story, which serve to illustrate the point that a completely regimented, clockwork society is a very bad idea. The first planet, Uriel, is still attuned to nature, with untamed plains and peaceful gardens reflecting the inhabitants’ state of existence. By contrast, the second planet, Camazotz, is entirely regulated; the houses are all identical, the houses’ inhabitants are all identical, and the actions the inhabitants take are all identical, with no room for deviation. Anything that doesn’t fit exactly into the mold is removed and replaced. After leaving Camazotz, the characters visit the planet with the even stranger name of Ixchel; what we see of it is much less rules-oriented than Camazotz but still more ordered than Uriel.

The characters’ time on Camazotz also expresses the author’s argument about the importance of being your own person, which is a subset of point 1. Everyone on Camazotz is effectively mindless, under the absolute control of a single intelligence, IT (in all caps). They believe what IT wants them to, to the point of eating a “turkey dinner” that actually is just nutrient paste and perceiving it as a turkey dinner. Under the entity IT, they are doubtless able to achieve good results through coordination and numbers, but there is no room or ability for innovation. This is exemplified by the capital city on Camazotz being effectively a 1960s suburbia forever despite having the capability to advance. The most advanced technology seen is in the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building, and seems to have more to do with the sheer psionic power of IT (the entity) than scientific development.

A Wrinkle in Time could be categorized as soft science fiction; the “tesseract,” the book’s method of faster-than-light travel, is farther toward the softer end of science-fiction travel than different methods from different fiction, and this applies to other aspects of the story as well. The book is about on par with C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy in terms of science versus more magical or psionic aspects in the story, heavily favoring the pseudo-magical as opposed to scientific concepts. This quality is in line with the author’s purposes for A Wrinkle in Time, which focuses on the human elements of the story as opposed to the artificial components.

In conclusion, A Wrinkle in Time effectively makes its case that entirely conforming to the standards of everyone around you results in a loss of your own unique characteristics. The science-fiction elements of the story and the balance between scientific and pseudo-magical aspects serve to accentuate this.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: The upper edge of E10+ for some creepy stuff on Camazotz.

I'll give A Wrinkle in Time 4 stars, for being a good book.

(Endnote: In the original draft of this paper, I had the book incorrectly attributed to E. Nesbit instead of Madeleine L'Engle. It's fixed here, but that error will forever live on in the hard copy the teacher has.)