Wednesday, February 8, 2012

How does having a willing suspension of belief help Mrs. Murry in A Wrinkle in Time?

Although Mrs. Murry is a scientist, which means her training tells her to test and prove hypotheses and to be skeptical of anything that can't be verified with sensory evidence, she also tells Meg she has an ability to suspend disbelief. To Mrs. Murry, this means she is able to accept things she doesn't understand. This helps her because she is faced with many fantastic occurrences in the novel, such as the appearance of the supernatural beings Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which and Mrs. Who. As Mrs. Murray says, because of her ability to suspend disbelief:



Maybe that's why our visitor [Mrs. Whatsit] last night didn't surprise me.



Mrs. Murry's suspension of disbelief also helps her to accept the reality of the tesseract. It helps her as well to accept that Charles Wallace is different, something "new." She says of Charles Wallace's being special:



I'll just have to accept it without understanding it.



In a novel with a strong Christian message, the fact that a "brilliant" scientist like Mrs. Murry can believe in the supernatural without understanding it means that science and faith can coexist. 

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