Yaaaaay for Charles Wallace! I don't know why on earth people were hating on him so much in class.. I liked him a lot. People were saying how he’s unrealistic, but of course he’s not. We have to remember that this is a children’s book.. I’m sure that Madeleine L’Engle is very aware of reality and the fact that this kind of character is impossible and fantastic, but I think that she’s being deliberate in her portrayal of the Charles Wallace. Not that she’s deliberately making him unrealistic because whether or he’s plausible or not isn’t the point, but that she chooses to make him the way he is knowing that it’s not reasonable or realistic. The circumstances that arise in the story are best played out by these extreme, clear cut, fantastic characters and they serve to best communicate the themes and messages of the book. The characters are there to tell a story, and I’m okay with that. Also, I don’t think believability and plausibility are directly connected, because belief is ultimately a choice we make to surrender to the story and its players. We don’t have to judge and question the characters all the time.. they are who they, so we should let them be that way.
Oh.. and I like Charles Wallace because he’s a very spiritual boy. Usually intelligent people become extremely disconnected with their spirituality because of the conditioning that society and modern education do to our thinking and perception, but I like that he is so smart and yet so in touch with the spiritual reality of things, not because he “discovered” it like some weird adults do but because it’s natural to him. Yet, like many humans, he still makes mistakes and doesn’t know how to properly discern things. And in the end, even though he did make some stupid decisions, even those were out of love, though maybe mixed with his pride as well.
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