A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science fantasy novel written by American author Madeleine L'Engle. First published in 1962, the book won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The main characters – Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe – embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to rescue the Murrys' father and fight The Black Thing that has intruded into several worlds.
The novel offers a glimpse into the war between light and darkness, and good and evil, as the young characters mature into adolescents on their journey, and wrestle with questions of spirituality and purpose, as the characters are often thrown into conflicts of love, divinity, and goodness. It is the first book in L'Engle's Time Quintet, which follows the Murry and O'Keefe families.
L'Engle modeled the Murry family on her own. B. E. Cullinan noted that L'Engle created characters who "share common joy with a mixed fantasy and science fiction setting". The novel's scientific and religious undertones are therefore highly reflective of the life of L'Engle.
The book has sold over ten million copies and inspired a 2003 television film directed by John Kent Harrison as well as a 2018 theatrical film directed by Ava DuVernay, both produced by The Walt Disney Company.
Background
Raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, author Madeleine L'Engle began writing at a young age. After graduating from boarding school in Switzerland, she attended Smith College, where she earned a degree in English. In addition to writing, L'Engle also gained experience as an actor and playwright. At age 40, she nearly abandoned her career as a novelist, but continued to write after her publication of Meet the Austins.
L'Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time between 1959 and 1960. In her memoir, L'Engle explains that the book was conceived "during a time of transition". After years of living in rural Goshen, Connecticut where they ran a general store, L'Engle's family, the Franklins, moved back to New York City, first taking a 10-week camping trip across the country. L'Engle writes that "we drove through a world of deserts and buttes and leafless mountains, wholly new and alien to me. And suddenly into my mind came the names, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which." This was in the spring of 1959. When asked for more information in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983, L'Engle responded, "I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant."
L'Engle has also described the novel as her "psalm of praise to God."
Additionally, L'Engle drew upon her interest in science. The novel includes references to Einstein's theory of relativity and Planck's quantum theory.
A Wrinkle in Time is the first novel in the Time Quintet, a series of five young-adult novels by L'Engle. Later books are A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. The series follows the adventures of Meg Murry, her youngest brother Charles Wallace Murry, their twin siblings Sandy and Dennys Murry, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe. Throughout the series, family members band together to travel through time as they attempt to save the world from the grasps of evil.
Publication history
Upon completion in 1960, the novel was rejected by at least 26 publishers, because it was, in L'Engle's words, "too different", and "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adults' book, anyhow?"
In "A Special Message from Madeleine L'Engle", L'Engle offers another possible reason for the rejections: "A Wrinkle in Time had a female protagonist in a science fiction book", which at the time was rare.
After trying "forty-odd" publishers (L'Engle later said "twenty-six rejections"), L'Engle's agent returned the manuscript to her. Then at Christmas, L'Engle threw a tea party for her mother. One of the guests happened to know J. C. Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and he insisted that L'Engle should meet with him. Although the publisher did not, at the time, publish a line of children's books, Farrar met L'Engle, liked the novel, and ultimately published it under the Ariel imprint.
In 1963, the book won the Newbery Medal, an annual award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American children's literature. The book has been continuously in print since its first publication. The hardback edition is still published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The original blue dust jacket by Ellen Raskin was replaced with new art by Leo and Diane Dillon, with the publication of A Swiftly Tilting Planet in 1978. The book has also been published in a 25th anniversary collectors' edition (limited to 500 signed and numbered copies), at least two book club editions (one hardback, one Scholastic Book Services paperback), as a trade paperback under the Dell Yearling imprint, and as a mass market paperback under the Dell Laurel-Leaf imprint. The cover art on the paperback editions has changed several times since its first publication.
The book was reissued by Square Fish in trade and mass market paperback formats in May 2007, along with the rest of the Time Quintet. This new edition includes a previously unpublished interview with L'Engle as well as a transcription of her Newbery Medal acceptance speech.
Plot summary One night, 13-year-old Meg Murry meets an eccentric new neighbor, Mrs Whatsit, who refers to something called a tesseract, which Meg later discovers is a scientific concept her father, Dr. Alex Murry, was working on before his mysterious disappearance years earlier. The following day, Meg, her child genius little brother Charles Wallace, and fellow schoolmate Calvin visit Mrs Whatsit's home, where the equally strange Mrs Who and the voice of the unseen Mrs Which promise to help Meg and Charles Wallace find and rescue their father. Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which turn out to be supernatural beings who teleport the children through the universe by using a tesseract, a fifth-dimensional phenomenon explained as folding the fabric of space-time; this form of travel is called tessering.
Their first stop is the planet Uriel, a world inhabited by centaur-like beings who live in a state of light and love, fighting against the approaching darkness. There, the Ws demonstrate to the children how the universe is under attack from an evil being that appears particularly clearly on Uriel as an overwhelming dark cloud, called the Black Thing. The Ws then take the children to Orion's Belt to visit the Happy Medium, a far-seeing person with a crystal ball, who shows them that Earth is partially covered by the darkness, although great religious figures, philosophers, scientists, and artists have been fighting against it. Mrs Whatsit is revealed to be a former star, who exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to fight the darkness.
The three Ws tesser the children to the edge of the inhabited part of a dark planet, Camazotz, which has succumbed to the Black Thing, and reveal that Dr. Murry is somewhere on the planet. The three Ws cannot join the children in their search, so they give the children gifts before they part ways: Mrs Whatsit strengthens Calvin's communication skills, gives Meg her faults, and gives Charles Wallace the resilience of childhood; Mrs Who gifts Meg her glasses to use at an appointed time and reminds Charles Wallace that he does not know everything; Mrs Which orders the children to stay together and be strong. The Ws then depart.
As the children approach the town they spotted when they first arrived on Camazotz, they notice every house in the neighborhood is a copy and everyone is acting exactly the same as each other. The children stop a boy to question him; he tells them everything is controlled by CENTRAL Central Intelligence and they should head there for information. When they reach the Central Intelligence Center, they are confronted by the Man with Red Eyes, the mouthpiece of IT, a disembodied brain with powerful telepathic abilities that controls the planet. Attempting to discover his father's location, Charles Wallace allows himself to be hypnotized by the Man with Red Eyes. While he is hypnotized, Charles Wallace explains that Camazotz is the result of all uniqueness being removed from the denizens of the planet and leads the children further into the building. They eventually arrive where Dr. Murry is being held captive, but Meg and Calvin are unable to access his prison or get his attention.
Using Mrs Who's glasses, Meg breaks into the prison and reaches her father. Dr. Murry attempts to break Charles Wallace's hypnosis, but he is unable to do so. Charles Wallace leads the trio to a dome which houses IT, which attempts to hypnotize Meg, Calvin, and Dr. Murry. Feeling themselves succumbing, Dr. Murry tessers Meg, Calvin, and himself to the adjacent planet Ixchel before IT can hypnotize them. Charles Wallace is left behind, still under the influence of IT, and Meg is paralyzed from contact with the Black Thing after they tesser through it.
They find the inhabitants of Ixchel are beast-like, with featureless faces, tentacles, and four arms. Despite their frightening appearance, one cures Meg's paralysis, prompting Meg to nickname it "Aunt Beast". The trio of Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which arrive on Ixchel and assign the rescue of Charles Wallace to Meg alone. Arriving at the building where IT resides, she finds Charles Wallace still under IT's control. Inspired by hints from the Ws, Meg focuses all her love on her brother and is able to free him from IT, at which point Mrs Which tessers the two of them off Camazotz.
The group tessers back to Earth to the forest near the Murry home, and back to the moment in time just after the Ws and the children originally left Earth; the Ws then vanish.
Characters
Analysis
Religion The novel is highly spiritualized, with notable influences of divine intervention and prominent undertones of religious messages. According to James Beasley Simpson, the overwhelming love and desire for light within the novel is directly representative of a Christian love for God and Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the children encounter spiritual intervention, signaling God's presence in the ordinary, as well as the extendibility of God's power and love. Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy works are in part highly expressive of her Christian viewpoint in a manner somewhat similar to that of Christian fantasy writer C.S. Lewis. L'Engle's liberal Christianity has been the target of criticism from conservative Christians, especially with respect to certain elements of A Wrinkle in Time.
L'Engle utilizes numerous religious references and allusions in the naming of locations within the novel. Camazotz is the name of a Mayan bat god, one of L'Engle's many mythological allusions in her nomenclature. The name Ixchel refers to a Mayan jaguar goddess of medicine. Uriel is a planet with extremely tall mountains, an allusion to the Archangel Uriel. It is inhabited by creatures that resemble winged centaurs. It is "the third planet of the star Malak (meaning 'angel' in Hebrew) in the spiral galaxy Messier 101", which would place it at roughly 21 million light-years from Earth. The site of Mrs Whatsit's temporary transformation into one of these winged creatures, it is the place where "the guardian angels show the questers a vision of the universe that is obscured on earth." The three women are described as ancient beings who act as guardian angels.