Written by Madeleine L’Engle, the book A Wrinkle in Time is a John Newberry Medal recipient, a science fiction story for young readers. This book is about love, growth, and determination, which can inspire courage in readers.  

Meg, the protagonist, was overweight and bullied by her classmates in large part because of her absentee father, a physicist working on the outside. Meg and her mother lost contact with  Mr. Murry, her father, so Meg is desperately anxious to find her father. Charles,  Meg’s little brother invited Calvin, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which to help them search the place where their father was. The three witches took the three children to Uriel by tessering or traveling through the dimensions. They rode  on Mrs. Who’s back after she transformed into a horse-like creature. Then, they continued their trip to another planet, where they found Happy Medium, a friend of the three witches. Finally, they arrived at Camazotz, the planet where the Black Thing was.

In Uriel, each child gained the mysterious gifts from three witches before separating from them but Mrs. Who gave a pair of glasses to Meg as an extra gift. These gifts helped the kids overcome difficulties. After the three children went into the town in Camazotz, they found the CENTRAL central intelligence building in the middle of town where the man with red eyes controlled Charles to deceive Meg and Calvin. The hoax claimed the IT was their friend, and the three witches were their enemy. However, the astute Meg figured out that he was deceiving her and Calvin. Suddenly, Meg saw her father in a large, round, transparent column in the middle of a small room after she walked into the building with the man with red eyes and the controlled Charles. Meg tried to get into the column but could not get in. Then she put on the glasses that Mrs. Who had given her and rescued her father. Meg, Calvin, and Mr. Murry followed the controlled Charles to the headquarter of IT which Meg attempted to fight with but could not defeat. Mr. Murry quickly tessered with Meg and Calvin to another planet to avoid Meg from being controlled by IT. Unfortunately, Meg got injured when they were tessering to another world where the three beasts that they met saved Meg. The three witches came and found the three children. Meg tessered by herself for the first time to Camazotz and saved Charles. In the end, the three witches took Charles, Meg, Calvin, and Mr. Murry back to Earth.

Reading this book was emotional, especially when Meg transformed while searching for her father. Earlier on, Meg was always very timid, especially at exploring unknow things, but now she saved her father on her own.

She was small, overweight, and powerless at the beginning of the story. Meg once feared a clap of thunder. “Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook. She wasn’t usually afraid of weather. ---It’s not just the weather, she thought. ---It’s the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.” Meg was very fragile in this part of the story, and she was even scared to death when she heard the sound of thunder. Suddenly, she rushed downstairs and discovered the light was on in the dining room. Then she saw her mother, Mrs. Murry, and her little brother, Charles Wallace, sitting beside the table. Meg ran up to her mother and stayed in her arms. Meg’s father was not home, so she felt slightly different without him. But she sought comfort from her mother, as her mom was both her mother and home. “Meg knelt at her mother’s feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone.” Meg felt warmth and safety when she saw her mother in the kitchen. She also remembered a quote that her father had once told her. “‘Oh, my darling, you’re not dumb,’ her father answered. ‘You’re like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn’t happen to be the usual pace.’” This quote gave her courage, making her feel confident when her father was with her.

Meg became increasingly confident on the way to find her missing father. She had hoped that her father could help her to save Charles and take them back to Earth. However, Meg was utterly dejected when she discovered her father could not help her. “‘No! And you’d better take me back to Camazotz and Charles quickly. You’re supposed to be able to help!’ Disappointment was as dark and corrosive in her as the Black Thing.” This experience was a turning point for Meg when she came to realize that her father was not omnipotent,thus awakening her to change how she perceived the world. She was aware that she should solve the problems independently instead of relying on someone else, like her father.  She had to learn to trust herself.

“‘Hydrogen. Helium,’ she started obediently. Keep them in their proper atomic order. What next. She knew it. Yes. ‘Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine.’ She shouted the words at her father, turned away from IT. ‘Neon. Sodium. Magnesium. Aluminum. Silicon. Phosphorus.’” This quote means that Meg wanted to break the rhythm to protect herself from being controlled by the IT, since IT controlled people with a specific rhythm. So she, recalling bitterly the teasing from her classmates, put all her strength to crazily yell out mathematical numbers and the periodic table of elements to save herself from the enormous power of the Black Thing in IT . However, she still could not defeat the enormous power of the Black Thing. 

Meg became increasingly more courageous by the end of the story.  She grew up during the trip to find her father, especially when she tried to save her and her little brother, Charles Wallace. Meg discovered her talents and saved Charles with her courage from her father. “And that was where IT made ITs fatal mistake, for as me said, automatically, ‘Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,’ suddenly she knew. She knew! Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.” So then, Meg saved Charles all by herself, and by her love to Charles Wallace because he was her little brother, and they had grown up together on Earth.

Meg shows authentic progress through the trip to rescue her father. In the beginning of the story, she was tiny, overweight, and weak-spirited, where she once feared a clap of thunder rain and lightning. However, in the end, she was courageous and confident, which helped her beat the evil and rescued her family.  

Citation:

Book A Wrinkle In Time