A Wrinkle in Time

If you want to make the world a better place, there are many things you probably should do, and at least two that you must.

1) Read A Wrinkle in Time at least once.

2) When they are old enough, and they are ready, give this book to your children.


I first read A Wrinkle in Time when I was in third grade. I loved it, but didn't read it again for a long time. Then a few years ago, I stumbled across a copy while browsing through a store which sold old books. It's not a hard book to find, by any means, but it seemed appropriate to find and remember it there, among those huge stacks of faded books. That place had eons of nostalgia stored away on crumbling yellowed pages, and I decided to take a bit home with me that day. I read the book again after I bought it, and for the third time the past couple of nights. It made me think about a lot of things. It's an incredible book about what it means to be human, to be alive. In retrospect, I have to wonder how much of who I am is tied to those books I read growing up.

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"It's much too wild a night to travel in."
"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs. Whatsit said. "I just got caugt in a downdraft and got blown off course." ... "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."

Tesseract. Take this word, and say it aloud. Feel how it forms on your tongue, seems almost to have weight and substance, and then rolls off the tip into the air. There's a glimpse into the brilliance of this book. There are tons of words, real and imaginary that would have sufficed for ending that paragraph. Tesseract is the only one that is perfect. But I'm not going to tell you what it means.

So, plot synopsis. I never was too great at this part.
The book is about three children, Meg, Charles, and Calvin. The story centers around Meg Murry, an intelligent, awkward girl, who can't quite seem to find her place. Charles Murry is her younger brother, a genius that everyone thinks is a moron. Calvin O'Keefe is a boy from school, a few grades ahead of Meg, who is quite intellegent, athletic, and comes from a home where he doesn't fit at all. Together, these three children are led by Mrs. Whatsit, and her friends, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, through the fabric of the universe in order to find and rescue the Murry children's father, who has been missing for several years. They learn a lot along the way, about what makes life beautiful, and about a terrible shadow of sameness which threatens to swallow the entire universe in its misery. It must be fought, at all costs. And it is.

Well, I guess that's enough to get you started. I don't want to spoil it if you haven't read the book, and anyway I have to get back to practicing my tessering. Keep reading, people.

”It was a dark and stormy night…

I don’t know how many times I read those opening words before I realized they were an allusion—the first of many--in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. This classic Newbery Award winning children’s book was written in 1962 and originally rejected as too complex by publishers. Although it is written on a 5th grade reading level, the science, fantasy and theology- related concepts it contains—travel through time and space, the dangers of unthinking conformity and scientific irresponsibility, and the saving power of love¹ --make it a much more sophisticated read.

Meg Murry, the book’s central character, is a bright, awkward, volatile 6th grader, daughter to a pair of brilliant scientists (Father is a physicist; Mother has doctorates in biology and bacteriology, and is stunningly beautiful, to boot). Meg has twin 10-year-old brothers, “nice, regular children,” and a 5-year-old “genius baby brother,” Charles Wallace, who hasn’t started school yet, doesn’t speak much in public, and who everyone in town thinks is retarded, or at least slow. Sandy and Dennys, the twins, have the emotional intelligence to know how to blend in at school, a skill that Meg lacks. Meg’s awkwardness, her longing for her missing father, her anger at teachers and neighbors (all hypocritical adults), her despair at having mousy brown hair and never being a beauty like her mom—in short, her general teenaged angst--make her a sympathetic heroine.

At the beginning of the book, Meg’s father has been missing for more than a year and is presumed by the mean-spirited, gossipy townsfolk to have run out on the family. As it turns out, Mr. Murry has been working on a secret government project, experimenting with the 5th dimension. He has learned, however imperfectly, to tesser—to move through space instantaneously by wrinkling time—and has become trapped on a Dark planet. Meg, Charles Wallace, and a new friend Calvin O’Keefe embark on a quest to find and rescue him.

Calvin’s a neighbor, a few years ahead of Meg at school, a smart kid and an athlete. He’s redheaded and lanky, easygoing and friendly, and not put off by Meg’s prickliness. He and Charles Wallace hit it off right away when they meet in the woods between their houses. As he explains to Charles, he’s a sport—but in the biological sense of not fitting in his family, not the athletic sense. Charles Wallace, of course, had not needed the clarification.

Charles Wallace has always been especially attuned to Meg’s needs and emotions, and also to those of their mother. (Not because he can’t discern the twin’s thoughts equally well, but because they don’t seem to need him, so he concentrates on the others.) He talks like a reasoned adult rather than a child, listens to arcane mythology and scientific tracts as bedtime stories, and always seems to know more than he should—or possibly could—about what’s going on. He has an extraordinary mind, and his character’s story contains one of the earliest examples of hubris I can remember reading.

Guiding the children on their mission are three mysterious beings, crusaders for the light, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. Because she finds it difficult to verbalize, Mrs. Who communicates almost entirely in idioms and quotations (presented in their original language along with a translation); she cites, among others, Seneca, Dante, A. Perez, Shakespeare, Horace, Euripides, Cervantes, Delille, Goethe, and my personal favorite:

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.²

Mrs. Whatsit appears first to Meg and her family as a disheveled tramp, and it later becomes apparent that the shapes taken by the "three witches" (a deliberate reference by the author to Shakespeare's Macbeth) are just forms they choose for their own amusement. Mrs. Whatsit confides later that she is “exactly 2,379,152,497 years, 8 months, and 3 days” old and that she had once been a star (in the literal, astronomical sense of the word). At one point, in order to carry the children and show them what they will be battling, she transforms herself:

”Now don’t be frightened, loves,” Mrs. Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description.

Calvin fell to his knees.

”No,” Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs. Whatsit’s voice. “Not to me, Calvin. Never to me. Stand up.”³

The “three Mrs. W’s” take the children to see the Happy Medium, who shows them, from the safe distance of a planet in Orion’s belt, the dark cloud that covers Earth:

”But what is it?” Calvin demanded. “We know that it’s evil, but what is it?”

”Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!” Mrs. Which’s voice rang out. “Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknesss!”

”But what’s going to happen?” Meg’s voice trembled. “Oh, please, Mrs. Which, tell us what’s going to happen!”

”Wee wwill cconnttinnue tto ffightt!”

Something in Mrs. Which’s voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs. Which with pride and confidence.

”And we’re not alone, you know, children,” came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. “All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it’s a grand and exciting battle. I know it’s hard for you to understand about size, how there’s very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won’t seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it’s a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it’s done so well.”

”Who have our fighters been?” Calvin asked.

”Oh, you must know them, dear,” Mrs. Whatsit said.

Mrs. Who’s spectacles shown out at them triumphantly. ”And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

”Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why of course, Jesus!”

”Of course!” Mrs. Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”

”Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”

”And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!”

Now Calvin’s voice rang with confidence. “And Schweitzer and Ghandi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!”

”Now you, Meg,” Mrs. Whatsit ordered.

”Oh, Euclid, I suppose.” Meg was in such an agony of impatience that her voice grated irritably. “And Copernicus. But what about Father? Please, what about Father?”

”Wee aarre ggoingg tto your ffatherr,” Mrs. Which said.

”But where is he?” Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.

Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. “On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong.”⁴

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A Wrinkle in Time is Meg’s coming of age story, from the loss of innocence that comes with her first viewing of the Black Thing to her “shattering yet ultimately freeing discovery” ⁵ that it is she, with all of her faults, who must rescue her father and her brother. She learns the difficult lesson that Father is not omnipotent, and that merely locating him does not make everything all better. She has help from the ‘three witches’, Calvin and Charles, and from my favorite character, a being she calls “Aunt Beast”, who is blind but sees more clearly the true nature of things than those who are sighted—Meg is given help and support, but she is also pushed into a position where it is she alone who must act. She does not go willingly at first, or gracefully, but Meg does finally find the strength within herself to do what must be done.

The enemy Meg fights is a totalitarian, homogenizing force which permits no independent thought or action in its subjects. Middle schoolers reading the book recognize on some level the appeal of sameness, of belonging, of everyone being ‘in tune’--the need to fit in and be part of a group is so very strong in adolescents. But at the same time, none of us are ever completely able to accomplish that goal, and it is also part of our nature to cheer for the outsider, the underdog who can't or won’t behave `properly'. Of all the characters in the book, Meg is the least able to fit in with a group, even when that ability would prove useful. As such, she becomes the champion for uniqueness and individuality when it becomes not a matter of making nice, assimilation, or integration, but of resisting the annihilation of the self.

A strong sense of love—-for family, for all that is Good, and increasingly for Calvin—-courses through the book:

Now instead of reaching out to Calvin for safety, Meg took his hand in hers, not saying anything in words but trying to tell him by the pressure of her fingers what she felt. If anyone had told her only the day before that she, Meg, the snaggle-toothed, the myopic, the clumsy, would be taking a boy’s hand to offer him comfort and strength, particularly a popular and important boy like Calvin, the idea would have been beyond her comprehension. But now it seemed as natural to want to help and protect Calvin as it did Charles Wallace.⁶

A friend who recently finished A Wrinkle In Time for the first time (does anyone only read it once?) commented that the theme of Love as all-triumphant is well worn. I’m sure this was the case in 1962 when the book was new, but I can’t help but think that many of the stories written since that time owe some of their ideas to L’Engle’s book. Like Ursula LeGuin, whose hero in A Wizard of Earthsea confronts evil inside himself, L’Engle is introducing universal themes to a young audience. There are few authors who can present this gift more gracefully.

Like St. Exupery in The Little Prince ("That which is essential is invisible"), L’Engle makes the point repeatedly that things are not always what they seem, or what they look like: “We do not know what things look like, as you say,” (Aunt) Beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.” ⁷ Not only is this a truth that bears repeating, a story that brings this message home is of great comfort to any "misfit" adolescent reading it who feels that s/he just doesn't fit in.

If you missed this book while you were growing up, find a copy. It won’t take long to finish, and your life will be the richer for having read it.

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¹ The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature ² Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time 1962; Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, ISBN 0440228395, page 31. ³ibid, pages 57-58. ⁴ibid, pages 81-83. ⁵ book review on Amazon.com; no author cited ⁶ L’Engle, pages 88-89. ⁷ibid, page 170.

Liverwurst and Little League were two of the most interesting words I read in the first chapter or two of "A Wrinkle In Time", and I am still trying to place them. As some of you might have been aware, I have read a lot of Young Adult Fantasy, but somehow I have not read "A Wrinkle In Time", or at least, I haven't finished it. And in fact, even more oddly, I don't know much about it. When was this book published? Who was its target audience? I do know that it won a Newberry Medal and was followed by either a series of sequels, or was part of a series, depending on how you look at it. (And this is an important question). So what was it like to actually read this famous book that I had somehow missed?

(Some of this might be covered above, but I am doing my own short plot recap before launching into my own take)
Meg Murry is typical suburban girl dealing with...wait, no she isn't. Meg Murry is the child of two scientific researchers, but her father, a physicist, has disappeared. She lives with her mother, twin brothers, and younger brother, who is some type of genius. (And, today, might have been diagnosed with something). At the beginning of the book, she is living a typical adolescent life, with rebellion at school, and a crush on an older boy. I think this is sometime in the 60s or 70s: children were playing Little League, but still eating "liverwurst", whatever that is, and not pizza. This typical life is interrupted when three neighbor women are revealed to be extradimensional entities that whisk Meg, her little brother Charles Wallace, and slightly older crush (and also secretly a genius) Calvin away to another planet, where they reveal that the world is under attack by an evil force, and after visiting a planet where it is ascendant, they rescue their father and escape. But now they have Charles Wallace, and finally, (after meeting some other wise alien guides), uses the power of her love to free her brother and then they all return to earth, although there is room for a sequel hook, because the bad force is still out there.

Part of the problem with my reading is that several of the plot elements of this book, which were probably creative at the time (although, of course, this post-dates The Chronicles of Narnia, so not totally novel), are not bog standard ways to introduce your YA fantasy novel. The quick transition between typical adolescent life and cosmological strife does happen a bit fast (and that has bothered me in totally different contexts), but of course this book was written for younger people. The wise guides who can help, but only so much, and whose main job is getting the character in touch with their emotions is also something we are used to seeing. The evil force being an energy vampire who destroys creativity was also not a surprise, but again, maybe an original idea to put that there instead of a teeth-gnashing monster.

But what I really wonder about this book is what type of "real world" conflicts does the fantasy plotline mirror. Taking away the science-fiction elements, this is a book about a smart, non-conforming girl who doesn't fit in with middle-class adolescence. That is in some ways a universal story, but some parts of the book seem to be specifically about rebellion from suburban conformity---the central conflict of the Baby Boom generation. And then the deeper story behind that is whether Meg's anger at the world is a healthy thing or not. That probably would have had a lot of resonance in the 60s and 70s. A story like this is not all that far, thematically, from the books that Judy Blume wrote. And this is also I wonder when this came out, and whether it being part of a series was planned. Today, such a story would automatically be picked by up by editors as being relatable conflict with girls of a certain age, and would have been probably edited to make Meg more of a "girlboss". After all, before she wrote The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins had already written the "Gregor the Overlander" series, and the literary and commercial possibilities of The Hunger Games were probably obvious from the beginning. So was this book written with the specific purpose of giving us a series of books with a quirky, headstrong tween protagonist? Or did the mysteriously-named Madeleine L'Engle just dream this world up with no idea of its social impact?

I know many of these questions are outside of the purview of the book as a story-in-itself. But while I was reading this, I found myself more curious about where this book fit in the history of publishing and YA literature, and the "why" of the story. But of course, many internal aspects of the story can't be understood without looking at the external aspects of the story. Which, having written this unpolluted, I now feel myself able to go and research. Besides I have work in 13 minutes.