Calvin O'Keefe: CLOSET GEEK. A Year of the Tesseract post.

[rockinlibrarian]

Series Intro: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my FAVORITE BOOK EVER, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, I am filling 2012 with BLOG POSTS EXPLORING EVERY POSSIBLE ASPECT OF THIS BOOK IN GREAT DEPTH. I call it the Year of the Tesseract, and you can see what I've written already by clicking the year of the tesseract tag. There WILL be spoilers for Wrinkle and possibly other books throughout. So just go read it, already. Moving on:
Edit 2018:A newer (and probably better?) version of this post can be found at the GeekMom Blog.

A year ago next week I posted my Top Ten Literary Crushes, and topped the list with a character I couldn't quite decide on: either he SHOULD be #1 or he should be off the list entirely. I wasn't entirely sure I could justify him. We see Calvin through Meg's eyes-- irrationally self-loathing Meg. For unpopular nerdy girls, the idea of a popular jock turning out to be sensitive and kind and for some strange reason totally into you is wish-fulfillment, wish-fulfillment we're totally ready to grab onto. So begins the ubiquitous Longing for a Calvin of Ones Own (seriously, do you KNOW how many variations on the phrase "Calvin=*SWOON!*" I've seen in MacMillan's 50 Years 50 Days Blog Tour so far?)

But wish-fulfillment is just, you know, WISH-FULFILLMENT. It's ridiculous, looked at objectively. Why WOULD popular, self-assured Calvin take any interest in Meg? REALLY, TRULY. I worried that my affections for Calvin/Meg were stupid, until I remembered that this is Meg's POV, and Meg's perceptions are screwed. All Meg SEES at first is his apparent easy-going popularity, maybe because it contrasts so much with her own life at school. In reality, though, he's as lonely and frustrated-- and sad-- as she is. In some ways, maybe more.

Sure, he's a basketball star ("Just because I'm tall," he says, displaying for a moment Meg's own bad habit of dismissing her own successes). He's a pleasant, loquacious people-person. He also comes out of a miserable, neglectful, and possibly outright-abusive homelife, the third of eleven kids and the only one in the family with any interest in academics. He skipped two grades so spends most of his time at school with people older than him, who all also probably hit puberty sooner and stared down at him in scorn for awhile (until he shot up like the beanpole he is, of course, at which point some of them probably STILL stared down at him in scorn, but upwards). He NEEDS to be a people-person because it's the only way he can survive being an ODD-BALL.

What's he been hiding, how has he been holding himself back, to pass for normal so well? Are his brains truly accepted by the jocks and older kids he spends most of the day with? Are his empathy and negotiating skills really appreciated in a household that communicates primarily by yelling and cussing? When he meets the Murrys, a family that isn't ashamed to be different, suddenly he's FREE TO BE HIMSELF. And he tries to explain it to the stubbornly disbelieving Meg: "I'm not alone any more!... There hasn't been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, I can hold myself down, but it isn't me." Meg can't see it, but I can now. Calvin O'Keefe was a closeted geek.

One might argue that there's a difference between appearing well-adjusted and successful and actually feeling comfortable in ones own skin. Maybe Calvin had never been properly happy until he found himself in the company of people who had no problem with him, say, using words like "sport" in the biological sense. It makes you wonder where he would have ended up in life otherwise-- oh, probably successful enough in a general suburban businessman sense, passing for normal as usual. But would he have thrown himself into his work enthusiastically enough to become the World's Leading Expert in starfish regeneration without the inspiration of his future inlaws? Would he even have had the courage to pursue a career in science without Meg at his side to tutor him through the math?

"I've never even seen your house," he exclaims while heading there for his first Bunsen-burner stew dinner, "and I have the funniest feeling that for the first time in my life I'm going home!"

I have more to say about Calvin. I'd already planned to devote my Valentine's Day post to a full-on gush over Megvin, my very first favorite OTP. At the rate I'm going with posting, I don't want to GUARANTEE it, but I'll try, and we can continue wrapping sweet perfect misunderstood Calvin in our metaphorical fangirlish arms then. Whether or not it actually happens on Valentine's Day.

Comments

[grrlpup]

Is there a passage where Meg gets insecure and worries that Calvin is into her mostly for her family? On the other hand, Meg's family is her only functioning social group (and Meg is All About Family in a way that seems unusual for a teenager), so good thing they mesh well with Calvin.

I hadn't thought about Calvin being young for his grade, and probably a "weird poor kid" at school until he learned to cover it up. Awww. This is a much more appealing Calvin than the Mr. Perfect we get through Meg!

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

You know, there ISN'T such a passage, and I've always thought there ought to be. I've always been a little suspicious that maybe Calvin had a bit more of a crush on MRS. Murry that he projected onto Meg at first-- just at first! Mortal peril on the far side of the universe can do a lot to cement people's affections for each other rather than their moms! -- but still, he even admitted he thought her mom was hot at one point early on. But the narrative is pretty subtle about Meg and Calvin's relationship anyway-- even though there's a great deal of flirting (more than I ever realized until the last time I reread, actually) and eventually some good-luck-as-you-go-back-into-Mortal-Peril kissing, there's never any talk by the other characters or even the narrator of their being More Than Friends (until they show up married in later books)-- it is more like he's just accepted all at once into the whole family, not so much especially Hers. HMMM. Will write more next week!

[elouise82.livejournal.com]

I thought, the first time reading it, that Calvin pretty much had a crush on the whole family (especially, as you mention, Mrs Murry), but gravitated toward Meg because she needed him the most, and he was the kind of guy who needed to be needed. Upon my last re-reading, though, I decided I'd had it slightly skewed the first time around - while he was definitely drawn to the entire family, I think that what drew him to Meg was the sense that even someone in as wonderful a family as the Murrys could feel out-of-place, just as he felt out-of-place in his, and he actually felt more of a connection with her because of their similarities: they both loved their families fiercely and were deeply protective of them, but never quite felt they belonged.

And the fact that he respects her enough to accept that she can handle herself in Mortal Peril, even while wanting to protect her, is enough to make him swoon-worthy in my book.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

OOOO, your response has made me all squishy-gooey-swoony! For Calvin. Not you. It's okay.

I noticed Calvin's protective streak in a new way this last time through, which I was going to go into in next week's post, but I'll say here, too-- it's kind of cool narratively because Someone to Protect her is exactly what Meg WANTS and it really helps make him her dream guy, but essentially he then becomes an OBSTACLE in her whole character arc, which is the whole learning NOT to expect everyone else to protect her/solve her problems for her. So it's like, NOW she has to learn to be brave and believe in herself EVEN WHEN THE OPPOSITE IS NOW ALSO WARM AND ROMANTIC AND SQUISHY! And of course as you say, Calvin eventually has to respect that she needs to do that, for his part, too, which makes it all the more perfect!

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Hey, you know what I just realized? The Year Ago When I Posted the Top Ten Literary Crushes post also makes next week the anniversary of the beginning of our friendship! Yet another reason why HENRY TILNEY IS AWESOME.

[elouise82.livejournal.com]

Holy Anniversary, Batman! And thank you muchly, Henry Tilney, aka the-most-superior-of-all-Austen's-heroes-especially-that-drip-Mr-Darcy.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I worried that my affections for Calvin/Meg were stupid, until I remembered that this is Meg's POV, and Meg's perceptions are screwed.

Freudian slip there, by any chance?

Now I'm trying to remember what it said in A Swiftly Tilting Planet about Calvin's grandmother being related to a South American dictator. I read that book, but I had trouble following it.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I just remember the South American dictator shows up again in Troubling a Star (a Vicky Austin book), and I think something else. I had trouble with A Swiftly Tilting Planet, too, but then I haven't read it since 4th grade.

That wasn't a slip, that was me making words do what I want them to do.