Traits
Charles Wallace did not learn to talk until he was almost four, but then talked in full sentences, skipping over the "baby preliminaries" as Meg said. Because of his brilliance and his shyness, he is bullied by fellow children and misunderstood by adults outside his family. He recognizes that this is a problem he must solve himself; that like any new lifeform, he must learn to adapt successfully to his environment in order to survive.
Charles has blue eyes, and is repeatedly said to be small for his age. At fifteen, he looks "no more than twelve." This is offset somewhat by a mature and serious demeanor.
He prefers to be called Charles Wallace rather than Charlie or Chuck, as noted in Wind and Planet, but Meg frequently calls him simply Charles. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, he allows Mrs. O'Keefe to call him Chuck, correctly guessing that she is identifying him with someone from her personal past (her brother, as it turns out).
According to an April 2004 article in The New Yorker, Charles Wallace is thought to be partly based on Madeleine L'Engle's son, the late Bion Franklin. L'Engle herself has acknowledged that Bion was the model for another of her characters, Rob Austin, but has not stated a similar provenance for Charles Wallace.
Read more about this topic: Charles Wallace Murry
Famous quotes containing the word traits:
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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