Religiosity

Throughout the collection, L’Engle dramatizes the spiritual stakes of faith: how its presence can bring light in darkness, how its absence can render one blind. The first and last story of the collection, “The Birthday” and “A Sign for a Sparrow,” make clear the power of faith; the penultimate story, “That Which Is Left,” shows the ugliness of a life without it.

In “The Birthday,” Cecily Carey is a very young girl who cannot wait to celebrate her birthday with her parents. However, on her birthday eve, she is stunned by the existential anxiety that can only stun a very young child coming into consciousness: “all the people she passed in the street didn’t know who she was and wouldn’t remember that they had passed her…that was frightening” (2). For the first time, Cecily confronts the fact that perhaps she is not the...