A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle began writing A Wrinkle in Time in 1959. She completed it in 1960 and began sending it to publishers. It was rejected twenty-six times over two years — publishers said it was too complex for children, too simple for adults, too Christian, too science-fictional, too strange. It was finally accepted by John Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux on the recommendation of his children, who had read the manuscript. It won the Newbery Medal in 1963.

The premise: Meg Murry is an awkward, angry thirteen-year-old whose father, a physicist, has been missing for two years. One night, three strange beings — Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which — arrive and tell Meg, her younger brother Charles Wallace, and her friend Calvin that her father is imprisoned on a planet under the control of a force called the Black Thing. They travel there via a tesseract — a wrinkle in time, a fifth-dimensional shortcut through space — to rescue him.

What the book is actually about: L'Engle was a Christian who was also a scientist and a physicist's wife. She wanted to write a children's book that held both — that was not afraid of mathematics, theoretical physics, and also not afraid of the spiritual. The Black Thing, which covers planets and is described as evil and darkness, is the novel's central image: something that can be named and opposed, that is real without being limited to the supernatural.

The hero is Meg, who is not brave, not pretty, not popular, not exceptional in any way adults value — and who saves her brother through the one thing she has that the enemy doesn't: love. L'Engle's argument is not sentiment. It is that love, as a specific thing with a specific nature, cannot be replicated or counterfeited by a force that operates through control.

Meg Murry — angry, nearsighted, socially awkward, fiercely loyal. She is the right protagonist for the argument: someone who has no resources except love and stubbornness, and for whom that is exactly enough.

Charles Wallace Murry — Meg's five-year-old brother, who is telepathic and the most intellectually formidable person in the family. His certainty that he can reason with IT becomes the plot's central crisis: he underestimates what the enemy actually is.

Calvin O'Keefe — the popular boy who joins them; he is sensitive and perceptive in ways his social status doesn't reveal. His presence in the group is L'Engle's argument that the outsider's perceptions are not wrong, just different.

Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which — three beings of uncertain nature (they are eventually revealed to be something like angels or ancient powers) who guide the children. Mrs. Who communicates only in quotations from literature and scripture; Mrs. Which is powerful but imprecise in her materializations.

IT — the disembodied brain on the planet Camazotz that controls the planet's inhabitants through a mechanical uniformity: everyone bouncing balls at the same time, children coming home from school at the same time, complete synchronization. IT is the novel's image of conformity as control.

No. 1 · Camazotz. The planet under the control of IT is organized around perfect uniformity: children bouncing balls in perfect sync, houses identical, rhythms metronomic. The uniformity is disturbing before IT is revealed, because Camazotz looks like an extremely orderly suburb. L'Engle's argument — that perfect conformity is a form of evil — arrived in 1962 during the height of postwar American conformist culture. It remains one of children's fiction's most precisely political images.

No. 2 · Charles Wallace and IT. Charles Wallace believes his intelligence will protect him from IT. He walks into the danger voluntarily, certain he can reason with what he encounters. He is wrong: IT absorbs his intelligence and uses it against him, because IT can replicate intelligence but not love. This is L'Engle's theological argument: that what resists evil is not cleverness but love, and that the two are different in kind, not just degree.

No. 3 · Meg's rescue. Meg cannot fight IT with her mind. She has to fight it with love — specific love, love of Charles Wallace specifically, love that is not a general feeling but a directed force. The rescue works because love of a specific person cannot be counterfeited by a force that operates through abstraction and control. L'Engle is making a Christological argument and a psychological one simultaneously.

A Wind in the Door (1973) continues the story with cellular biology as its SF framework; A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978) involves time travel and genetics. The three together form a coherent argument.

Read this if you are…

• A child or parent who has a child who feels like they don't fit — who is smart and awkward and doesn't know where they belong.
• Anyone interested in children's fiction that takes science seriously without leaving faith behind.
• Readers curious about L'Engle's synthesis of Christianity and physics: it is unusual and not found elsewhere in children's fiction.

Skip it if you are…

• Looking for hard SF: the science is handwavy by adult standards. L'Engle uses physics as metaphor; the tesseract is a story device, not a rigorous concept.
• Troubled by the Christian allegory: L'Engle's faith is embedded throughout, and more explicitly so than in Narnia.

• Camazotz is the argument. When you reach the planet of perfect conformity, read slowly. L'Engle is doing something politically specific.
• Charles Wallace's failure is the lesson. His intelligence is not enough, and his certainty that it is enough is exactly what makes him vulnerable. This is an unusual lesson for children's fiction to teach.
• Meg's love for Charles Wallace is specific. L'Engle distinguishes between love as a general principle and love as a specific directed attachment. The distinction is the rescue's mechanism.

• C. S. Lewis — The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). The Christian allegory comparison: Lewis's faith and L'Engle's are different, and their approaches to embedding theology in children's fantasy are different. Reading both together clarifies the distinction.
• Ursula K. Le Guin — A Wizard of Earthsea (1968). The non-Christian comparison: a secondary world fantasy of similar ambition but built on Taoist rather than Christian premises.
• Edwin Abbott Abbott — Flatland (1884). The dimensional-mathematics comparison: Abbott's satirical novella uses the concept of dimensions to explore perception. L'Engle's tesseract is in the same tradition.

1. Camazotz is organized around perfect conformity — everyone moving in sync, no deviation. L'Engle presents this as evil. Is perfect order necessarily evil? What is missing from Camazotz?
2. Charles Wallace's intelligence is exactly what makes him vulnerable to IT. Why does IT need his intelligence? What does it do with it?
3. Meg's rescue of Charles Wallace works through love rather than cleverness. Is L'Engle's argument that love and intelligence are different in kind, or just that love is stronger?
4. The three Mrs. W's are guides who cannot fight the battle for Meg — they give her tools and then she must act. Why can't they do it for her? What is L'Engle arguing about how children grow?
5. The novel was rejected 26 times because publishers couldn't categorize it. What makes it hard to categorize? Is it children's fiction, SF, fantasy, religious allegory?
6. L'Engle was a Christian writing SF. How does her faith shape the novel's argument about good and evil? Does the argument work for non-Christian readers?