Pulling Off the Boots of Angels: Some Thoughts on A Wrinkle in Time

 

For this coming semester, I am planning on teaching A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle to my fifth graders. To prepare, I have been doing a close rereading of the book and am continuously struck by how deeply biblical L'Engle was in her thinking. Like C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, L'Engle takes what is outwardly a science fiction story about traveling through outer space to other planets premised around an unapologetically non-materialist worldview. Instead of a cold and empty space, we are presented with the heavens filled with intelligences that defy human comprehension. Our primary "aliens," Mrs Whatsit, Who, and Which are angels out of the Book of Ezekiel. They are not beings that anyone would ever think to put on a Christmas tree. To behold them would mean to flee in terror or bow down in worship.   

We are first introduced to Mrs Whatsit, not in her winged-centaur form but as an old lady who walks into the Murry residence in the middle of the night while there is a storm raging outside. She asks for caviar, Meg makes her a tuna salad. Whatsit then has Mrs. Murry pull off her boots. This angelic visit is modeled after the story of Abraham hosting strangers, who turn out to be angels. Abraham serves them food as well as their feet, allowing their feet to be washed as they rest under a tree (Genesis 18:4). There is also the parallel to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the last supper. 

I watched the Disney adaptation and found the film to be a fabulous example of people either not understanding the source material or intentionally wishing to reject the values that the story stood for. One can gain a fuller appreciation of the book's religious thought by noticing the subtle things that the film changed to the impoverishment of the story.

       

Take the example of Mrs Whatsit's visit. Instead of an ugly old tramp walking into the Murry home, we have the beautiful Reese Witherspoon. There is no sense of disgust or reason to feel threatened by this Mrs. Whatsit. She does not wear anything so ugly as a pair of soaking wet boots. She is not so rude as to ask anyone to take them off and cause a mess. She does not ask for food. She simply comes into the house, is charmingly eccentric, drops the important plot point that she knows what a tesseract is, and then leaves.  

While the basic plot is maintained, we are stripped of what made the book meaningful. Not only are robbed of the angelic centaur transformation later in the story, here we are not allowed to have the angel being human complete with having to walk around in boots with sopping wet soaks. This matters because, from the very beginning, the moral heart of the story is undermined. Without the opportunity to serve a tramp tuna fish while her mother takes off her boots, we do not see the Meg's ability to love as something that transcends reason. This is the very superpower that Mrs Whatsit is going to be relying on to save Meg's father and defeat the cold utilitarian logic of It. No wet boots, no love that transcends reason, no faith in what cannot yet be understood, so no reason why Charles Murry should prefer his family to being possessed by a giant brain. We are simply left with send the children to be captured by the dark one so that they can defeat him through "I love you."