A Wrinkle In Time BookFiles Guide (PDF) - Scholastic
Scholastic BookFiles A READING GUIDE TOA Wrinklein Timeby Madeleine L’EngleManuela Soares
Copyright 2003 by Scholastic Inc.All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC REFERENCE, SCHOLASTIC BOOKFILES, and associatedlogos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without writtenpermission of the publisher. For information regarding permission,write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557Broadway, New York, NY 10012.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSoares, Manuela.Scholastic BookFiles: A Reading Guide to A Wrinkle in Time byMadeleine L’Engle/by Manuela Soares.p. cm.Summary: Discusses the writing, characters, plot, and themes ofthis 1963 Newbery Award–winning book. Includes discussionquestions and activities.Includes bibliographical references (p. ).1. L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time—Juvenile literature.2. Science fiction, American—History and criticism—Juvenileliterature. 3. Space and time in literature—Juvenile literature.[1. L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. 2. Americanliterature—History and criticism.] I. Title: A Reading Guide toA Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. II. Title.PS3523.E55W737 2003813′.54—dc2120020426650-439-46364-510 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 103 04 05 06 07Composition by Brad Walrod/High Text Graphics, Inc.Cover and interior design by Red Herring DesignPrinted in the U.S.A. 23First printing, July 2003
ContentsAbout Madeleine L’Engle5How A Wrinkle in Time Came About11Chapter Charter: Questions to Guide Your Reading14Plot: What’s Happening?18Setting/Time and Place: Where in the World Are We?23Themes/Layers of Meaning: Is That What ItReally Means?Characters: Who Are These People, Anyway?2836Opinion: What Have Other People Thought AboutA Wrinkle in Time?48Glossary50Index to Quotes52Madeleine L’Engle on Writing55You Be the Author!58Activities60Related Reading61Bibliography63
About Madeleine L’EngleMadeleine L’Engle doesn’t think of herself as a children’sbook writer. She’s just a writer. She writes books that shewould want to read.L’Engle believes kids need heroes like Meg in A Wrinkle in Time,because heroes were important to her when she was growing up.“I always needed somebody that I wanted to be as good as,” shesays, “if not better than.”L’Engle was born Madeleine L’Engle Camp on November 29,1918. Her mother was a pianist and her father was a journalistand a writer who fought in World War I. His lungs were damagedfrom mustard gas, a poisonous gas that was used as a weapon inthe war. Because of his health problems, the family traveled toplaces where the air was dry and easy to breathe.As an only child, L’Engle grew up lonely and always wished for alarger family. She says that’s why the families in her novels havelots of children.Wherever her parents lived they always had many friends—artists, musicians, and writers. “Their lives were very full andthey really didn’t have time for a child. So I turned to writing toamuse myself.”5
L’Engle grew up in a house full of books, so reading and writingcame naturally. “My parents read aloud to each other everynight,” says L’Engle. Among the books they read were the worksof the French writer Alexandre Dumas. It was from Dumas thatL’Engle says she found “a sense of story.”When Madeleine was twelve, the family moved to a town in theFrench Alps. She was sent to a boarding school, which shehated. When she was fourteen, the family returned to the UnitedStates and Madeleine was sent to Ashley Hall, a boarding schoolin Ashley, South Carolina, which she loved. She was seventeenand still at Ashley Hall when her father died. She went on tospend four years at Smith College, graduating with honors in1941. In 1981 Smith awarded her a Smith Medal for “service tothe community that reflects the purpose of a liberal artseducation.”After graduating from Smith, L’Engle moved to the GreenwichVillage neighborhood in New York City with three other youngwomen. She still wanted to be a writer, but “I had to pay the bills,so I went to work in the theater.”While she was on tour as an actress, Madeleine wrote her firstbook, The Small Rain. At this time she decided that having threenames was more than she needed. So, Madeleine dropped herlast name, Camp.L’Engle knows all about her heritage. The name L’Engle can betraced back to two French brothers, one Catholic and one6
Protestant. They fought and the Protestant brother got mad andleft France. He changed the original spelling of his name, whichwas L’Angle, to L’Engle. “I’m descended from the mad brother!”L’Engle says with a laugh.While she was rehearsing a play, she met an actor named HughFranklin. They were married when they were on tour withanother play. A short time later, they both decided to give upacting. They moved to rural Connecticut, where they opened ageneral store.“It was a very safe place to start raising our kids,” L’Engle recalls.“No city lights, no noises at night.” They lived in a very smalltown that is a lot like the town in A Wrinkle in Time. In fact, itwas while they were living in Connecticut that L’Engle wroteA Wrinkle in Time.Although their store was successful, the Franklins missed NewYork City. After ten years, they moved back to the city with theirthree children, settling into a large eight-room apartmentoverlooking the Hudson River.Despite the fact that L’Engle was an author who had alreadypublished six books, it took more than two years to find apublisher for A Wrinkle in Time. Later, after the book was asuccess, one publisher who had rejected it told her, “I wish I’dhad the chance to publish it.” L’Engle mailed him a copy of therejection slip he had sent her.7
How does it feel to have such a huge success after trying for solong to find a publisher? “Since it was the book nobody wanted,”says L’Engle, “it feels kind of nice.”A Wrinkle in Time won the prestigious Newbery Medal in 1963,the year after it was published. It is the first book in whatbecame a four-book series called “The Time Quartet.” Three otherbooks about the Murry family were published after A Wrinkle inTime. They are A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, andMany Waters. In A Wind in the Door, Meg and Calvin, schoolprincipal Mr. Jenkins, a farandola, and a cherubim, travel insideone of Charles Wallace’s mitochondria to save him from an evilbeing. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, newly married Meg takes atelepathic trip with Charles Wallace through time in order to savethe world once again. The twins Sandy and Dennys are theheroes in Many Waters, in which they time-travel to the time ofthe biblical Noah.Another book, An Acceptable Time, is sometimes considered partof the Time series because it includes Meg’s parents. But it isreally about Polly O’Keefe, Meg’s daughter. It belongs with thefour-book series about the O’Keefe family, which also includesThe Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Water, and A House Likea Lotus.L’Engle’s longest series is about the Austin family. The serieshas eight books: The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, A FullHouse, Meet the Austins, The Anti-Muffins, The Moon by Night,The Young Unicorns, A Ring of Endless Light, and Troubling aStar.8
L’Engle has many personal heroes—people she looks to forinspiration and encouragement in her life and work. Thecomposer Johann Sebastian Bach is high on her list. “If I get outof proportion and all confused, if I can sit down and play Bachfugues, he’ll pull me back.” She also loves Mozart and Scarlatti.L’Engle especially likes Albert Einstein and calls him “SaintAlbert.”“He [Einstein] says that anyone who is not lost in rapture at thepower of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burnedout candle.”L’Engle has never lost her awe of the universe. This awe helpsgive her the inspiration to write.“When I look at the night sky I’m looking at time as well asspace,” says the author, “looking at a star seven light-years away,and a star seventy light-years away. . . . It’s so exciting that itmakes me want to write . . . so I send Meg to the outer galaxies.”Now in her mid-eighties, L’Engle is a writer-in-residence anda volunteer librarian at St. John the Divine Cathedral in NewYork City.What advice does Madeleine L’Engle have for her readers?“Be brave! Have courage! Don’t fear! Do what you think youought to do, even if it’s nontraditional. Be open. Be ready tochange.”9
Selected AwardsBelow you will find a chronological list of the major awardsMadeleine L’Engle has won during the course of her writingcareer. John Newbery Medal for A Wrinkle in Time (1963) Runner-Up, Hans Christian Andersen Award for A Wrinkle inTime (1964) Sequoyah Children’s Book Award for A Wrinkle in Time (1965) Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for A Wrinkle in Time (1965) Austrian State Literary Prize for The Moon by Night (1969) Austrian State Literary Prize for Camilla (1971) Honor Certificate, New England Round Table of Children’sLiterature (1974) Newbery Honor Book Award for A Ring of Endless Light (1980) American Book Award for A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1980) Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award for A Ring ofEndless Light (1981) Newbery Honor Book Award for A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1981) Smith Medal from Smith College (1981) University of Southern Mississippi Silver Medallion for“outstanding contribution to the field of children’s literature”(1986) ALAN Award for outstanding contribution to adolescentliterature (1986) Margaret A. Edwards Award for “lifetime contribution to youngadult literature” (1998)10
How A Wrinkle in Time Came AboutMadeleine L’Engle had written and published several booksbefore writing A Wrinkle in Time. Though L’Engle sentWrinkle to many publishers, it kept getting rejected. “I got a fewqueries saying ‘Who is the book for?’ I said it’s for people; I don’twrite for an age group, I write for people.”L’Engle explains further, “I write stories because that’s how I lookfor truth. I was looking for truth when I was writing Wrinkle. Welive in a world where it’s very difficult for people to understandthat a story can be truthful and not factual.”Most of the objections to the book, she recalls, “were that itwould not be able to find an audience, that it was too difficult forchildren.”A Wrinkle in Time combines elements of science fiction andfantasy with two of L’Engle’s special themes—moral responsibilityand the power of love, especially family love. But it is also basedon science, one of L’Engle’s favorite subjects. She reads a lot ofscience books and uses scientific ideas in her writing.In Wrinkle, tesseracts are used to travel through time and space.L’Engle says the science behind tesseracts is real. “I read a lot11
about particle physics and quantum mechanics, and I have a fewscientist friends who will let me pick their brains. I came acrossthe word ‘tesseract’ in a science article and kind of got fascinatedby it.”Writers are always told to write about what they know, andL’Engle says she modeled the main character of Meg after herself,because “I’m the only person I know that well.”During her school life, L’Engle often felt as Meg does, lonely andawkward. She, too, had problems with her teachers. L’Engle alsosays she is stubborn, just like Meg. There are a few differencesbetween Meg and the author, though. Meg is good in arithmeticand not so good in English. L’Engle was very good in English anddidn’t do so well in math.L’Engle explains, “If I’m writing about a twelve- or fourteen-yearold, I’ve got to be myself at that age.”One question she is asked a lot is why she began the book withthe words “It was a dark and stormy night. . . .” According toL’Engle, the phrase “a dark and stormy night” is one that is usedto start lots of scary stories, the kind of stories people toldaround campfires when L’Engle was growing up. Those words letyou know it is going to be a scary story.When Wrinkle was finally published, L’Engle won the NewberyMedal, the most prestigious children’s book award in America.12
In her acceptance speech, she explained that the process ofwriting A Wrinkle in Time was a mysterious one:A writer of fantasy, fairy tale, or myth must inevitablydiscover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge orexperience, but out of something both deeper and wider. Ithink that fantasy must possess the author and simply usehim. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’tpossibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a bookI had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it waswritten that I realized what some of it meant.13
Chapter Charter:Questions to Guide Your ReadingThese questions will help you think about the importantparts of each chapter.Chapter 1 What do Meg Murry’s actions tell you about her? How doesMeg feel about her family? How is Charles Wallace different from most five-year-olds?Have you ever met an unusual child like Charles Wallace? How do we know that Mrs. Whatsit is odd—but friendly? Does ending the chapter with the tessaract make you want toread on? If so, why? What does Mrs. Murry’s treatment of Mrs. Whatsit tell youabout Mrs. Murry?Chapter 2 Why does the school principal, Mr. Jenkins, want Meg toaccept that her father is never coming home? Should Megbelieve him? Why? Why not? In what ways are the twins Sandy and Dennys different fromthe rest of the Murry family? Why do the twins think Meg has so much trouble at school? What does Mrs. Who say to Meg that lets us know thatsomething is about to happen?14
Chapter 3 How is Calvin’s home life different from Meg’s? How is hisschool life different from Meg’s? What does Mrs. Murry mean when she says, “. . . just becausewe don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’texist.” What is a “willing suspension of belief”? How does having awilling suspension of belief help Mrs. Murry? What are the hard questions that Calvin asks about Meg’sfather? Are you surprised when the children go off with Mrs. Who,Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which? Why do they go off with thesestrange women?Chapter 4 Why does Mrs. Who like to quote? Do you think it is aneffective way to communicate with the children? Why orwhy not? Why do you think Calvin is asked to go on the journey withMegan and Charles Wallace? How would you react if you were taken on a surprise journeyto another planet?Chapter 5 What does the children’s experience in a two-dimensionalplanet tell you about tesser travel? During their journey, the children learn about the Dark Thing.What do you think the Dark Thing really is? Who are some of the famous people mentioned as fighting theDark Thing? What do they all have in common?15
Chapter 6 Why is the Happy Medium’s worst trouble “getting fond”? Describe the planet of Camazotz. What characters have you met through reading other booksand stories who also have magical qualities like Mrs. Whatsit,Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which? What do the children learn about the people of Camazotz? Howdo you know?Chapter 7 Charles Wallace says that they can’t make decisions based onfear. Do you agree? Explain. When the man with red eyes tries to take over the children’sminds, whom does Meg scream for and why? What mistake does Charles Wallace make when he meets theman with red eyes?Chapter 8 Charles Wallace seems well and happy, just as the man withred eyes says he is. How does Meg know that Charles Wallace’smind and heart have been taken over? Describe what life is like on Camazotz. How is it different fromyour own life? Is anything the same? How do they keep people from suffering on Camazotz? What doyou think of this idea? What do you think IT is?Chapter 9 Why does Charles Wallace want to take Mrs. Who’s spectaclesfrom Meg?16
Do you believe, as Meg does, that Mr. Murry will really savethem? Why or why not? Explain the phrase “like and equal are two entirely differentthings.” How does this idea help Meg?Chapter 10 Why is Meg so sick after escaping from IT? What are Meg’s feeling about her father, brother, and Calvinafter escaping from IT? Do you think she should feel this way?Explain why. What do you think of Mr. Murry’s reasons for not rescuingCharles Wallace? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?Chapter 11 What would you do if you suddenly met up with three aliens? What is it about the beast that convinces Meg to trust her?What are the some of the things that let you trust someone? Why do you think Meg finally trusts the beast? Why is the name Aunt Beast a good one for this alien creature? Why do the time travelers have so much trouble explainingMrs. Whatsit to the creatures on Ixchel?Chapter 12 Why doesn’t Meg hug Mrs. Whatsit when she appears on Ixchel? Why does Meg have to be the one to go after Charles Wallace? How does Mr. Murry help Meg on the journey back toCamazotz? What gift does Mrs. Whatsit give Meg for her journey back toCamazotz? What is Mrs. Which’s gift? What does Meg have that IT doesn’t have? Is this somethingshe can use in other situations? If so, how?17
Plot: What’s Happening?“What could there be about a shadowthat was so terrible that she knewthat there had never been before orever would be again, anything thatwould chill her with a fear that wasbeyond shuddering, beyond crying orscreaming, beyond the possibility ofcomfort.”—A Wrinkle in TimeAWrinkle in Time is about the journey of three children tofind a missing man, and perhaps help save the universe.Twelve-year-old Meg Murry is having problems at school. She isbored with schoolwork and doesn’t seem to fit in with the otherkids. Meg has ten-year-old twin brothers, Sandy and Dennys,but she’s closest with her five-year-old brother, Charles Wallace.Meg’s father has been missing for some time, and she is worriedabout him. Some people think that Mr. Murry abandoned thefamily. But Meg and her mother believe that Mr. Murry is doing18
important government work and, for some unknown reason,can’t return to them.Charles Wallace has made friends with a very odd lady, Mrs.Whatsit. One evening, Charles Wallace and Meg go to visit Mrs.Whatsit and her two friends, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. Thechildren find an older boy, Calvin O’Keefe, near the house. Megrecognizes Calvin from school. After visiting the ladies, thechildren go back to the Murry house for dinner where Calvin andMeg get to know each other better. Before the night is over,Charles Wallace tells them that Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, andMrs. Which are taking them on a trip to an unkown location.“I don’t know [where] exactly,” says Charles Wallace. “But I thinkit’s to find Father.”It’s a scary trip because Meg finds herself completely and utterlyalone in soundless darkness. When they arrive at their firstdestination, the planet Uriel, Meg discovers that they havetessered—or wrinkled—through time.Mrs. Whatsit transforms into a white horselike creature and fliesthe children to a mountaintop on the planet Uriel. There sheshows the children what they are fighting: a dark thing that blotsout all light. It is so huge it can surround planets—includingEarth. This dark thing makes everyone shudder with fear. Theyalso learn that Mr. Murry has been fighting the Dark Thing (alsocalled the Black Thing). To rescue him, the children will have totravel behind the Dark Thing to the planet Camazotz. Their three19
guardians will be able to watch, but they will not be able to doanything to help the children.On Camazotz, Calvin, Charles Wallace, and Meg find a townwhere all the houses look the same. In identical front yards,children are bouncing balls and skipping rope in unison. Eachball and rope hits the sidewalk at the exact same instant. Thedoors to each house open at the same time, and mothers comeout at the same moment. The paperboy comes by, throwing thepaper to exactly the same spot at every house. He tells thechildren that
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