A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

If you're going through Hell, keep on going
Don't slow down, if you're scared, don't show it
You might get out before the devil even knows you're there
-Rodney Atkins

Why do you think we have wars at home?  Why do you think people get confused and unhappy?  Because they all live their own, separate, individual lives.  I've been trying to explain to you in the simplest possible way that on Camazotz individuals have been done away with.  
-Charles Wallace to Meg in A Wrinkle in Time

May we never have to experience mind control like that on Camazotz.  And what better way to celebrate community and the difference of opinion than at a book club?  :)  Please join us this Wednesday evening as we discuss A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.  Suggested discussion questions are below.

Drop us a note and let us know if we can hope to see you!

Discussion questions:

1. Did you like this book?
2. Had you read it before?  How did this reading compare to your previous impressions?
3. How would you describe Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which?  What are they?
4. What is so special about Charles Wallace and Calvin?  Similarly, how is Meg not like one or the other?  ("'Meg has it tough,' Charles Wallace said.  'She's not really one thing or the other.'" p.32)
5. Building on question #4, are some people born with a spiritual side and some not?
6. What is the limitation of sight/light?  What extra sense might the Beasts have (reminiscent of those of an octopus) that we lack? (Meg, while trying to explain light and vision to Aunt Beast: "she knew that to try to explain anything that could be seen with the eyes would be impossible, because the beasts in some way saw, knew, understood, far more completely than she, or her parents, or Calvin, or even Charles Wallace." p.175)
6. What do you make the idea of a fifth dimension?
7. What to make of the Medium?  Why did they stop there?
8. How about the ending?  Too simplistic?
9. After seeing the Black Thing from the high mountaintop of Uriel and after tessering through it to Camazotz, did anyone else find it a bit anticlimactic that IT was a large brain?  Or was that just the form the Black Thing chose to take on Camazotz?
10. Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace name fighters of the Black Thing from their planet: Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Bach, Pasteur, Madame Curie, Einstein, Schweitzer, Gandhi, Buddha, Beethoven, Rembrandt, St. Francis, Euclid, Copernicus, and Father.  (p.85)  How would you define the "Black Thing" of our world?  How would you say we are fighting it?
11. What do you make of Calvin's home life?  Is that built upon in other books?  (Did anyone else have a L'Engle Family Tree at the front of the book?)
12. What do you think happened to Hank, the first man to tesser?  Will we ever know?  Have you read other books by L'Engle in which these characters appear again?
13. What is the importance of community in this book?  How might this compare to Sebastian Junger's idea of humanity's need for community in Tribe?  Along those lines, please come to O'Neill on June 4th for a discussion of Junger's book as part of the social justice book club, this month's theme "changing the world together".

Follow-up:

Hello Mamas!

Thank you to all of you who came out for our discussion of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.  Some of us will have to read the rest of the series to see what happens next!

We are having a social night in June, so please join us for that, and in the meantime, you can read ahead for August when we will discuss Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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