"For you, as well as for all the rest of all the happy, useful people on this planet,I, in my own strength, am willing to assume all the pain, all the responsibility, allthe burdens of thought and decision."
Although Charles Wallace, together with the planet's entire population, succumbs to IT, who "sometimes calls Itself the Happiest Sadist," Meg never does. She learns to say NO, to refuse IT, who is, as her father tells her, "completely unused to being refused." She sees through IT's lies. Mrs. Who's advice to her jumps off the page:"Vitam impendere vero (to stake one's life for the truth). That is what we must do.That is what your father is doing."
She finds that what she considers her faults -- her inability to pretend, her anger, her stubbornness -- serve her in good stead; rather than being taken in by IT's lies, she sees through IT and discovers the truth about herself and society.
In the end Meg discovers that she possesses great inner strength. Not only does she refuse to be manipulated, but she discovers that her anger and love and care for the truth are what she must rely on; that she must take responsibility for her own life; and that if she has courage, all things are possible.
Only a comatose adult could miss how apposite this book is to the group thinking that dominates our society today, the torrent of lies spewing forth from the pressitute media, and to the problems plaguing young people, who are engulphed by a sea of electronic garbage that is destroying their ability to think and concentrate.
"To stake one's life for the truth" has never been a popular pursuit. Truth has always been given lip service as lies have flown out of mouths apace. Today the United States has become a society of endless propaganda, and unless many Meg Murrys come along, the future is dark indeed.
Parents need to wean themselves and their children off their addiction to the electronic drugs that have destroyed their ability to think or concentrate long enough to understand that IT (Information Technology?) controls them. If not, I'm afraid the game is up. If you wait to introduce your children to the Oprah Winfrey/Disney movie version of A Wrinkle in Time that is due out next spring, you will have allowed them to be swallowed by the mindless drivel of the entertainment complex that reduces everyone and everything to one-dimensionality and political correctness masquerading as freedom.
Introduce them to the book now before it is too late.
In his great essay "The Storyteller," Walter Benjamin wrote:
"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. n His nesting places -- the activities that are intimately associated with boredom -- are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this, the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears."
We need boredom today more than ever. Gift your children with this most creative of experiences by eliminating the electronic noise that is turning them into Camazotzians. It might lead them into a book, a place where freedom waits to be hatched, and they may take flight into a life devoted to seeking and telling truth in a country of lies.
(Article changed on August 1, 2017 at 13:43)
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