A Wrinkle in Time and the Role of the Freak in Fantasy

By Yasmin Hadizad

“Nobody should be exactly like anybody else.” – Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

If you’re a real fantasy buff, or a total faker who just watched Stranger Things 5 (me), then you’ve probably read or heard of the hit fantasy sci-fi novel, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This classic young adult story has won many prizes and served as inspiration for many science fiction and fantasy writers. The plot follows Meg Murry, her baby brother Charles Wallace, and her friend Calvin O’Keefe on their journey across spacetime and around the universe as they search for Meg and Charles’ missing scientist father. The novel, like most 20th century children’s fantasy, also features a battle against a big bad evil—an entity called The Black Thing whose dark shadow results in pain and strife all over the universe.

Also, like most 20th century (and early 2000s) children's fantasy lit, the novel centres on an outcast. Meg Murry, as described in a dedication by Anna Quindlen, has “braces, glasses, and flyaway hair.” She is considered incompetent, strange, and unpleasant by her teachers and  fellow students. The adults around her bombard her constantly with snide remarks about her father’s disappearance. Her principal, Mr. Jenkins displays a constant contempt for Meg’s “differentness:” “Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable.”

The thing about a lot of young readers is that many of us have been able to relate painfully to that feeling of otherness—whether we were othered for our “general attitude,” our home lives, our interests, our physical appearances, our gender, our sexuality, or even just the fact of being a child who reads—there is something profoundly relatable in hearing Meg exclaim in tears: “I wish I were a different person…I hate myself.”

At least, I know I felt a tug in my gut. 

If you grew up reading fantasy in the early 2000s, you probably remember most of your favourite main characters—from Percy Jackson to Harry Potter, Lyra Belacqua to Meg Murry—being characterized  as the underdogs: Percy Jackson, a boy with ADHD who moved from school to school, being devalued by his teachers and living a friendless existence with his cruel stepfather; Harry Potter, a scrawny kid living in a cupboard in his aunt and uncle’s basement; and Meg Murry, the girl who hates the way she looks, whose father has disappeared, whose teachers consider stupid, and who gets into fights at school defending her brother from bullies.

The Hallmark of classic children’s fantasy—especially as exemplified in A Wrinkle in Time—is The Freak. The Outcast. The Nerd. The kid with a terrible home life who gets bullied at school. The kid with a braceface who gets into fights. The kid who teachers think is a lost cause. And this, I argue, is a critical element of popular children’s fantasy: a character that young readers who feel outside of normal society can look at and say “that’s me,” and then “maybe I can be a hero, too.” The children’s-slash-YA fantasy formula takes the outcast on an inspiring journey of growth filled with magic and heroism, providing readers with a real, fleshed-out, and interesting MC while giving young Freaks a crucial, crucial hope. 

This, I argue, is a slowly dying art. Modern fantasy main characters, especially in the YA genre, are starting to lose the quirk and strangeness that once made fantasy so important to “outcasts” everywhere. Often in favour of providing the reader with more escapism, fantasy leads are becoming increasingly flawless, all-powerful, and desirable; and though many retain something like a traumatic home life, some feature that makes them “different,” I argue that it’s often done superficially, or at least more superficially than our childhood favourites. Ultimately, I can definitely say that modern fantasy leads have, to the detriment of the real-life freaks, lost some of the quirk that has thus far made them interesting. 

But I might be biased. 

Because one thing that modern and older popular fantasy has in common is a concerning lack of main characters that fully represent real-world outcasts. While we can all appreciate neurodivergent rep in PJO (one way or another), and the portrayal of characters with poor home lives, low-income families, and mouths full of braces, there is a notable absence of main characters of colour, queer main characters, and characters of different faiths in older and newer YA fantasy alike. And concerning the criticality for a child being able to read their favourite magical series and see themselves in it, this is a massive problem. Like chips-at-the-foundation-of-the-fantasy-novel-itself massive. 

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time has done incredible things for outsiders everywhere, taking the reader on a journey with a group of kids who don’t belong in society and who discover through a compelling battle with the embodiment of conformity—another evil entity called IT—the strength in their differentness. On the desolate planet of Camazotz, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace face a being who forces its subjects to adhere to strict policies of sameness. Everyone behaves the same, looks the same, and thinks the same for fear of terrible punishment. It is only through the assertion of her individuality and the power of love that Meg can overpower IT and finally rescue her father from its captivity. 

“But that’s exactly what we have on Camazotz. Complete equality. Everybody exactly alike,” IT says. 

“No!’ (Meg) cried triumphantly. ‘Like and equal are not the same thing at all!”

I think that modern fantasy has a whole lot to learn from L’Engle. 

But, at the end of the day, what the modern fantasy series needs—in addition to an underdog who is interesting, multi-dimensional, and representative of the nerds in its readership—is real diversity. The kind that appears in R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War, in Tracy Deonn’s The Legendborn Cycle, and in The Daevabad Trilogy by SA Chakraborty. Whether they even set out to prove the importance of outcasts to society, children's and YA fantasy needs the kind of representation for those who are always made to feel like they’re on the fringes. 

I would have loved to know that kids like me could also become saviours of the universe, and I think if there is anything we can learn from Madeleine L’Engle, it’s that differences must be celebrated, always and in every form. 

“The most memorable books from our childhoods are those that make us feel less alone, convince us that our own foibles and quirks are both as individual as a finger-print and as universal as an open hand.” 

– Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time