Timothy's Thoughts

W e often think of magic as something along the lines of a miracle. In the real world, magic is a bad thing because it puts peoples hopes in things that either have no ability to help them or have no desire to help them. But storybook magic is often a means by which a character is given something or an ability that he wouldn’t receive during the natural course of life. But suppose we wanted to apply a similar concept to a story that doesn’t have magic. Storybook magic is an ability of a character or object to do something that we don’t understand. In a more realistic setting, there are many people who have the ability to do things others can’t. In A Little Princess , the appearance of the fine things in her room seemed like magic, even though we know where it all came from. I was at a gas station a few weeks ago when a man showed up with a gas can and asked if I could put fifty cents or a dollar of gas in it. Other than it costing money, it was a small thing for me to go ahead and fi...

M agic is powered by children’s wishes. And those of adults too. Look at how many stories there are in which magic comes into a person’s life and it turns his world upside down. If you look, you’ll discover that someone has made a wish. Cinderella wished to go to the ball. Aladdin had three wishes. Charlie wished to visit the chocolate factory. There’s always a wish. Sometimes it comes in the form of a prayer either to God, Santa Claus, or some other being, but there is always a wish. The thing about a wish is that it acknowledges that the wisher has no or limited ability to accomplish what he would like to happen. Charlie was locked out of the chocolate factory and had no money to buy candy bars. Without the help of a higher power, he would have had no way of getting inside. I suppose wishes in stories are a parallel to prayer in real life. But wishes are fleeting. They have power for a while, but stories are about character change. The higher power in the story gives the character ...