A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle 5 points

 I  read this book for the first when I was in the fifth grade and I didn't take much from it. I  remember being super confused and not really understanding the meaning of the story. I  really enjoyed re-reading it though because I finally understood the more obvious themes. For one, I took away the theme of conformity versus individuality. At the beginning of the book, Meg harps on how different she is from her classmates and how her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is bullied because of how different he is. That's why I think this book is a great choice for the younger audience because most kids feel like their different from everyone else around them and sometimes it can be overwhelming. She wants to fit in so bad as her younger twin brothers do. Though it was hard for me to wrap my head around that concept when I was younger, I realized now how much I would have connected with the character had I understood it more. Meg is confronted about her wish for conformity when they come across this neighborhood where all the kids are wearing the same clothes and bouncing a basketball in sync in the driveway. It gave off a creepy vibe, as it was meant to, and it really shows how conformity isn't all it's cracked up to be. I think people wish for conformity without really understanding what they're asking for. I think it stems from insecurities and feeling like people are always watching and judging you, and wanting to be unseen. We think people notice our flaws because we have already judged ourselves for them and are expecting people to either give the same judgment or worse when in reality, no random person or even co-worker sees all of our flaws. Honestly, most of the time, no one is paying you that much mind anyway. I think it's important to highlight what conformity is at a young age because it's such a heavily pushed ideal in society, especially in school. All throughout school, I was pushed towards STEM when all I wanted to do was art. Even in high school, my advisor did everything she could to convince my art was just a hobby and that I would be happy in STEM, degrading art at every turn. It took me having a complete mental breakdown in the nurses' office for her to finally understand that she had to stop pressuring me. Conformity may look nice as a concept but no one is really happy in practice. To go on a further tangent, there is some hypercriticism in society where they praise and demonize people who are different. Like all celebrities get praised for being different and going big but demonized at every turn, by those gossip magazines who scrutinize their every move. Back to the book, there is another theme of this book that I really liked. There are so many stories of a brave hero who's not scared at all to go into the darkness and save the victim. Meg is the hero but her courage isn't a brave type of courage. When she went back to save Charles Wallace, she was scared. So it wasn't blind courage but love that compelled her to go back. Personally, I think it's a beautiful aspect of  her character.  

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