Charles Wallace Murry

Charles Wallace is the book's central character, a slender and pale fifteen-year-old who is portrayed as having unusual emotional, intellectual and psychic sensitivities. This book adds a spiritual sensitivity to that list of attributes, as Charles becomes increasingly aware, over the course of the narrative, of not only different kinds of spirituality at work in the world over time, but also comes to an awareness of his own. He comes to realize, in an enactment of one of the book's core themes, that true spirituality, true connection to the ways of the universe and faith, has more to do with trust in, and connection to, the unseen life force than it has with the restrictive rules and values imposed by rigid interpretation of the Bible. It could be argued that the author's thematic intent is to extend this perspective to include other so-called Holy Books, but...