Traveling through Different Worlds
Mrs. Whatsit sighed. “Explanations are not easy when they are about things for which your civilization still has no words. Calvin talked about traveling at the speed of light. You understand that, little Meg?” What does that have anything to do with anyone’s civilization?! Why is Mrs. Whatsit talking about explaining? Why is she calling Meg, “little Meg”? Meg isn’t “little”: she is 13 years old.
The genre of fantasy and mythology basically both deal with things that aren’t real, and can’t happen in normally-accepted 3-dimensional reality.
The difference between fantasy and mythology is that fantasy is more of a made-up thing. For example, it would be fantastic if there were flying bicycles, right? In The Magic Bicycle by John Bibee, John Kramer gets lift-off from an old heavy bike, and whizzes through the air. On the other hand, mythology can be defined as exaggerated versions of reality, held in common by a group of people. Therefore, some myths are acknowledged as commonly-held fact within a small group, and these are rejected by other groups. For example, the Greeks had gods like Jupiter and Mercury which are… also planets. But modern people don’t think of these planets in our system as gods, so much, but as the components in our solar system. But where does modern myth intersect fantasy?
In A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle, Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe were sent through a tesseract to a whole different world to find Meg’s dad who had been lost for four years. With the help of Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which, they stuck together and found a way out. Through thick and thin, Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin pulled through to save and bring back Meg’s father.
In fantasy, you will see more of flying bicycles and time traveling than gods and goddesses. The authors can get creative and basically write whatever they want: “I looked up into the sky and there it was, the flying cow!” Because it is a fantasy story, if the author did throw that out at you, as the reader of the book, you are almost forced to believe what the author says. When you say fantasy, in my mind, the first thing that pops up are unicorns, princesses, flying, goblins, castles, etc. I think fantasy is for people who like to believe things that are not real. I personally don’t like fantasy. I think that it is too confusing, especially with all the characters in it. It is harder for people to remember because they aren’t real so they can’t relate to it or see from their point of view. Oh, of course, if you like rainbow sprinkles on the mane of a smiling unicorn, or princesses who disappear at the stroke of midnight, perhaps you might enjoy reading fantasy. But in A Swiftly Tilting Planet I was not at all annoyed when Gaudior the Unicorn appeared, saying, “This is what you call me. Yes.” He didn’t consider himself as a unicorn like most would in fairy tales or princess books; nor were my hackles raised when Mrs. Who became a princess and helped Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin on their mission.
The Magic Bicycle is about a boy named John Kramer whose bike got run over. He went to the dump because he was so desperate to find a new bike before a bike competition he was entering. In such a hurry, he took a broken-down, rusty, dirty, old bike home. He thought that he could fix it up before the competition. Soon he found out that his bike could fly and it could move on its own. A man named Horace Grinsby found out that he had this bike and did everything possible to steal it. John had a bad temper and frequently got mad at his bike: one time he almost even ditched the bike because he got so mad at it. He went to Grandpa Kramer’s house and Grandpa Kramer showed him all these cool objects that were so interesting, like goggles that helped him see deeper into the world, interdimensionally.
In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Meg’s dad has a connection with the president and gets a call saying that there is going to be a nuclear war. They are sent to go back in time to change a “might have been” and basically save the world. They meet loads of people along the way – some bad, and some good. Gaudior, the unicorn, helps get Charles Wallace to the places he needs to be. However, Gaudior doesn’t see himself as a unicorn as most other single-horned horses would, always disappearing into the distance. Gaudior treats Charles Wallace almost like a partner and helps Charles Wallace through it all.
Out of all three books, my least favorite was A Swiftly Tilting Planet because there were so many characters involved. It got so confusing and towards the end I couldn’t even remember who was who. Especially because you can’t relate to it as much, since these things probably have never happened to you, it seems a stretch, or an unneccesary obligation to try and really feel as if you are there. With L’Engle’s writing, although you can get a feel of what it is like in their shoes, it isn’t easy to say, “oh yeah, that has also happened to me.” So, it is the fantasy author’s job to walk the fine line between their high-blown imaginations and what could be at least justified, in some way. Therefore, because in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the number of the characters got confusing for me, I lost interest. My suspension of disbelief was too taxed. But in A Wrinkle in Time, and A Magic Bicycle you get a taste of what it feels like to travel through the tesseract or fly in the sky. You feel what the character is feeling – but what is so different about each character?
Each memorable character has different personalities and traits, just like us. John Kramer from The Magic Bicycle, in my opinion, is brave. He fought back against Horace Grinsby and did all he could to protect the bike. I think of him as brave but you might think of him as defensive, yelling at the bike, but when Mr. Grinsby wants it and offers to buy it for a huge bundle of money and also give him a brand new bicycle, John refuses. When John is by himself and gets super angry at it, he wants to destroy it (but thank goodness he doesn’t)… then, when Mr. Grinsby comes, he is protective of it. Just like in A Wrinkle in Time when I think Charles Wallace is just really smart. You may agree with me or think otherwise. You might believe that he’s not necessarily smart but he is just psychic and can see into the future and get to know a lot of important and magical people. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet in the beginning, (before the onrush of multiple characters) I think Mrs. O’Keefe (Calvin’s mom) is very negative. However, you may just think she is lonely without Calvin at the family Thanksgiving party and that she just really misses Calvin.
The challenge for fantasy writers is to make the leap from realism to fantasy effectively. In the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time, Meg is scared because there is a storm and her bedroom is in the attic, so she goes downstairs. Then it becomes fantasy because Charles Wallace knows that Meg is going to come down stairs and he has prepared a sandwich for her. When in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Meg and her family plus Mrs.O’Keefe are having a realistic Thanksgiving meal, they get a call from the President of the United States saying there is going to be a nuclear war and that they have to go back in time to stop it. This call from the President adds veracity to the situation, and as he instructs them about the time travel, the reader has a sense that this could indeed happen. And from A Magic Bicycle, realism changes to fantasy when John Kramer is riding his bike around and all of a sudden it lifts up off of the ground. Because of the thrill the reader experiences when this happens (and because the reader expects it from the cover illustration), the magic is readily accepted.
How the author goes back and forth… from the world in which we live to things we wish we could experience, or from hard truths to things that are imagined, or that appear in our dreams – these are the components that make or break the leap of faith for the reader. The author goes back and forth from what we wish were real and things that actually do exist, to things we have dreamed about, or experiences that we know we can’t have. This is what makes the jump from realism to fantasy.
In A Wrinkle in Time, they travel to a different world; in A Swiftly Tilting Planet they travel through time; in The Magic Bicycle, they travel through the sky. Each are different but all involve traveling somewhere that most humans don’t go. A reality that you find in The Magic Bicycle is that John lives in a real world but as soon as he puts the goggles from his grandpa on, he sees and interacts with, so much more. From the cobra symbol to the three crowns, he can see so much deeper things in the sky. By seeing these things through the goggles, we have to ask ourselves this: are we simply blind to these things?
In each book, the characters travel through different substances. One is time (Planet), another is space (Bicycle), and last, (Wrinkle), through dimensions. The Magic Bicycle is about a boy (John Kramer) who travels through space above the Earth, but who learns (as part of his inner journey) to look into space. A Wrinkle in Time is about three kids, Meg Murray, Charles Wallace (Meg’s little brother who is a genius) and Calvin O’Keefe. They travel through a tesseract which locates them elsewhere in the universe, but also through different dimensional area, including a 2 dimensional planet. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, there is a “might-have-been” and they need to travel through time and change history as it is. Not only do they all travel through something, they also have a goal that they are trying to accomplish: The Magic Bicycle, to win the contest and keep the Magic Bicycle safe, A Wrinkle in Time, to get their father back, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, to change the course of history. They all have certain things that keep them motivated and push them to get moving forward, whatever type of space it is. Not covered in this essay is the Madeline L’Engle book, A Wind in the Door, which explores travel through the micro-verse, which are the tiny areas which we can see in our cells, in molecules, and even inside atoms, with objects called quarks. This novel also features the Murray and O’Keefe families.
Something that baffled me was how did Charles Wallace know who Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which were? How did Charles Wallace know so much about them when Meg knew nothing? How does Charles Wallace know when Meg can’t sleep and is going to come downstairs? He even made sandwiches for them because he was so sure that Meg was eventually going to come down. How can Meg just “kethe” things? How it is possible for her just to know what it is or see things? Is it basically like telepathy? How can some goggles just let you see a whole new world? Was it a coincidence that John found the bike that Grandpa Kramer knew so much about? How can a candy be so sweet and tempting that a boy would literally steal a bike from someone’s house and possibly get arrested? Was it just a coincidence that John accidentally was in a rush so he forgot to screw in a part and that was how it could fly? Was it faith? Or fate? These books lead to so many different questions. As I mentioned above, the authors of fantasy books can write anything their imaginations create, like mind-reading or teleporting, (many things humans wish were possible) and while I used to think that it wasn’t very interesting, I now realize that fantasy is more than children’s fairy tales, different from myth. In fantasy, there are so many different ways to see how the battle between good and evil can play out.