I
love well-worn books. They betray a hungry reader and a story worth devouring
more than once. The books I love the best often fall apart fastest, but they’re
the ones I care enough about to tape their covers back on and hot-glue their
bindings back together. One of these paper friends I’ve been promising myself a
new copy of for years is A Wrinkle in
Time. It’s a fast-paced, young adult sci-fi novel, and another Newberry Award
winner. It’s also surprisingly deep for a kid’s book, and I get something new
out of it every time I read it. It’s certainly darker than the books I’ve
talked about previously, but that darkness just makes the light at the end that
much brighter.
Madeline L’Engle; A Wrinkle in Time; Farrar, Straus and
Giroux; 1962.
The
book begins by introducing us to Meg Murry, a teenage girl with glasses and
braces spending a sleepless night alone in her attic bedroom during a
thunderstorm. After she ventures downstairs to find her mother and little
brother, Charles Wallace, also awake, the three are interrupted by a pounding
on the door. They open it to find an elderly woman, bundled up against the
storm, who introduces herself as Mrs. Whatsit. After she has been fed and
warmed by the Murrys, she sets off, casually mentioning to Mrs. Murry on her
way out that “there is such a thing
as a tesseract.” This shocks Mrs. Murry, who later explains to Meg that this
theoretical fifth dimension is what her father was experimenting with when he
mysteriously disappeared years ago.
Charles
Wallace, who despite his age is uncannily intelligent and has almost a sixth
sense about whether a person or situation can be trusted, decides the next day to go in
search of Mrs. Whatsit with Meg. On the way they bump into a school
acquaintance of Meg’s, Calvin O’Keefe, and decide to bring him along. The three
kids meet Mrs. Whatsit’s companions, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, who inform them
that Mr. Murry is in need of assistance. Later that night, the three odd women
show up and whisk the children away to another planet to help the Murrys' father.
The
six travelers visit a few different planets, and along the way the three women
(who are, the children begin to understand, actually higher beings whose
natural form is not physical) begin to explain things to the children. In space,
they are shown a great darkness that obscures much of the natural celestial
light, and are told that Mr. Murry is somewhere beyond that darkness, fighting
it. The women also try to explain the tesseract, their mode of travel—they
liken it to an ant trying to cross a piece of fabric, and instead folding the
fabric so that the distance travelled is almost nothing. They also show the
children their own planet from afar, and the children observe that it too has
begun to be overtaken by the darkness.
Finally,
the children are taken to Camazotz, where the women can no longer assist them.
The three begin to explore, and find that every resident of this new place is
in sync with one another, almost like robots. They enter a large building in
the center of town, and are met by a man with red eyes, who offers (or
threatens?) to make the children part of the system. Charles Wallace, in an
attempt to figure out who the man really is, gets hypnotized by him and begins
acting as though nothing is wrong. They then find Mr. Murry, who is unable to
help Charles. Charles, still “possessed,” in a sense, leads Meg, Mr. Murry, and
Calvin to IT, a pulsating, disembodied brain controlling every living thing in
the city. Its nearness threatens to overtake them, and in desperation, Mr.
Murry tessers off the planet with Meg and Calvin, leaving Charles Wallace
behind. After a respite on a dim planet with kind aliens who care for the
humans, the three women visit again, and although they cannot interfere with
matters on Camazotz, they prompt Meg to realize that she is the only one who
may be able to rescue Charles Wallace from the mind of IT. She is taken back to
Camazotz by Mrs. Which, and after a long and arduous struggle, frees her
brother’s mind by her love for him. All four humans are then transported back
to Earth, and the Murry family is reunited.
Even
though this synopsis is long, I feel that I’ve not done the book justice at
all. This is a wonderfully crafted story that puts the reader in the middle of
the heavenly battle between good and evil. The story, while wearing the
clothing of science fiction, gives the impression that more than the Murrys and
their fictional (?) universe is at stake. The reader, hopefully, comes away
wary of becoming merely a slave of society, while seeking to diminish the darkness in
his or her own life and wanting to increase the love they show to others. All
this is accomplished in a mere 200-some pages and within the covers of a
children’s (or at least young adult) novel. That astounding achievement makes
this a book worth reading many, many times.
