Blog entry 12: Pre-Writing

A Wrinkle in Time
For this blog, we needed to read a supernatural novel and use different approaches to interpret the story. The novel that I chose is “A Wrinkle is in Time,” which is a young adult scientific fiction written by Madeleine L’engle. This book is the first book in Madeleine L’engle’s classic Time Quintet and it was published in 1962. This novel, along with the other four novels, talks about the Murry and O'Keefe families (The Wrinkle in Time). I never read the book before and I found it very interesting after reading it. I will use Campbell’s Monomyth (The Hero’s Journey) to interpret the story since this book contains a lot of elements identified by the Monomyth. The theme of this novel is also very similar with the hero’s quest which is fight of good against evil and the ultimate triumph of love. The novel starts with the main protagonist Meg Murry’s father disappearance. She is told that his father’s mysterious disappearance is related to his work on exploring a scientific concept of tesseract, also known as a fifth-dimensional phenomenon. She and her extraordinary brother, Charles Wallace, then meet with three eccentric women, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. They claim that they can help them find their father. They then start the quest to explore into the unknown to save their father. Along with them in the journey is Meg’s friend, Calvin O'Keefe, who also has the same extraordinary ability as Charles Wallace. Both of them can read certain people’s thoughts and feelings. In the quest to save her father, they travel through space-time continuum to such places as planet Uriel and Camazotz. They also meet many strange, joyful beings whose minds are controlled by an evil being. He appears as a large dark cloud called The Black Thing. The Black Thing is a major antagonist in this novel and it is functioned through IT, a brain-like substance. During the journey, they face many dangerous attacks. For example, Meg is almost killed by IT. Meg’s brother, Charles Wallace, is also controlled by a man with red eyes. The red eyes man is controlled by IT and he has telepathic abilities which can cast a hypnotic spell over people’s minds. At the end of the story, she succeeds in rescuing her father from The Black Thing and frees Charles Wallace from IT. They return to Earth and live an ordinary life.

From the Monomyth, we know that the hero’s journey is basically separated into three main sections. They are departure, separation and return. The hero must first be given the task, receives it, and either do it by themselves or with friends. Along the journey, the hero will travel to the unknown and he or she will face a lot of trials and challenges. He or she may be helped by supernatural aid to succeed the quest. Lastly, he or she will choose to either stay or return to the ordinary World. Each section is branched into several stages to make up the whole hero’s quest.

According to the Monomyth, the first stage in hero’s quest deals with departure. The hero lives an ordinary life until he or she receive a call to adventure. In “The Wrinkle in Time”, Meg live a usual life with her family except with her father. On a stormy night, a mysterious old woman who knows Charles Wallace visits her house and told her something about the tesseract. This scientific term brings a lot of shock to her mother. The next day, Meg discovers the term refers to the concept his scientist father was working on before his mysterious disappearance. She knows that the old woman, Mrs. Whatsit, knows something had happened on her father. She and her brother, little Charles Wallace and her friend, Calvin decide to explore to the unknown World to rescue her father. From the Monomyth, we learn that supernatural aid is the appeal of a guide or mentor. In the story, they meet with another two strange women, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. This three Mrs. W’s promise to help her along the journey to save her father. Crossing of the first threshold talks about the hero crossing into the field of adventure, from known to unknown. The three Mrs. W’s changes into angelic beings and transport the three kids through the time-space continuum by mean of tesseract (a fifth- dimensional phenomenon). According to the Monomyth, belly of the whale is the final isolation of the hero’s world to the strange world. In this stage, Meg, Charles and Calvin reach the first stop in the quest, planet Uriel. They are totally separated from their known world.