A Wrinkle In Time
Madeline L'Engle
Adapted by Liz Rogers
English Language Arts, Grade 7
This digital text will assist the reader in reviewing the literary features and vocabulary words in the novel studied in class. The text will address the following New York State ELA Standards:
LA7.6.2 Understands and applies elements of plot and character development:
- protagonist and antagonist
- character traits and motivations
- relationships between character and plot development
LA7.6.4 Recognizes and understands specific literary devices and the power of language in a variety of literature:
- forshadowing
- flashback
- suspense
How To Use This Book:
This book will guide you through your reading of A Wrinkle In Time, an award-winning novel written by Madeline L'Engle. You will see characters on your screen who will help you learn vocabulary words, give you questions to think about, and who will read the text to you. You will also find links to click on to take you to websites where you can play games that will help you remember the vocabulary words and characters in the book.
If you click on Bot, he will read the text to you. Hali will ask you questions, or ask you to think about the story. Mony will help you by giving you his ideas about the question or topic Hali asked you to think about.
A Wrinkle In Time
by Madeline L'Engle
Protagonist and Antagonist
Meg is the protagonist in A Wrinkle In Time. She goes through several major changes throughout the story, and in the end she is the character who saves Mr. Murry and Charles Wallace from IT.
IT is the antagonist in A Wrinkle In Time. IT is the character who imprisons Mr. Murry and captures Charles Wallace. Meg must defeat IT to save her father and her brother.
Character Traits
It is important for you to understand the character traits of the main characters in the story. Below is a list of some of the main characters in the story, with some of their character traits.
Meg: awkward, impatient, defiant, determined, loving, loyal, anxious, plain, insecure
Charles Wallace: intelligent, telepathic, small, quiet, sympathic
Calvin: althletic, intelligent, troubled, popular
Meg
Authors use clues in the story to describe the traits of each character. The passage below is the author's introduction of Meg.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the lashing wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
She wasn't usually afraid of the 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.
School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped to the lowest section of her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a child with parents as brilliant as yours are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'll have to stay back next year."
During lunch she'd rough-housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg, we aren't grammar-school kids any more. Why do you always act like such a baby?"
And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At this she'd thrown the books on the side of the road and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse torn and a big bruise under one eye.
(Chapter 1, pages 3-4)
Motivations
Each of the characters in the story has their own motivation , which influences what they say and what they do. Read the following excerpt from the story and think about what the author tells us about the characters' motivations.
Meg Saves Her Father From IT
In the following passage, Meg confronts IT in order to free her father from Camazotz. As you read the passage think about how the author tells us about Meg's motivation for confronting IT.
As she cried out the words she felt a mind moving in on her own, felt IT seizing, squeezing her brain. Then she realized that Charles Wallace was speaking, or being spoken through by IT.
"But that's exactly what we have on Camazotz. Complete equality. Everybody exaclty alike."
For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then came a moment of blazing truth. "No!" she cried triumphantly. "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!"
"Good girl, Meg!" her father shouted at her.
But Charles Wallace continued on as though there had been no interruption. "In Camazotz all are equal. In Camazotz everybody is the same as everybody else," but he gave her no argument, provided no answer, and she held on to her moment of revelation.
Like and equal are two entirely different things.
For the moment she had escaped from the power of IT>
But how?
She knew her own puny brain was no match for this great, bodiless, pulsing, writhing mass on the round dias. She shuddered as she looked at IT. In the lab at school there was a human brain preserved in formaldehyde, and the seniors preparing for college had to take it out and look at it and study it. Meg had felt that when that day came she would never be able to endure it. But now she thought that if only she had a dissecting knife she would slash at IT, cutting ruthlessly through cerebrum, cerebellum.
Words spoke within her, directly this thime, not through Charles. "Don't you realize that if you destroy me, you also destroy your littlle brother?
If that great brain were cut, were crushed, would every mind under IT's control on Camazotz die, too? Charles Wallace and the man with the red eyes and the man who ran old number one spelling machine on the second grade level and all the children playing ball and skipping rope and all the mothers and all the men and women going in and out of the buildings? Was their life completely dependent on IT? Were they beyond all possibility of salvation?
She felt the brain reaching at her again as she let her stubborn control slip. Red fog glazed her eyes.
Faintly she heard her father's voice, though she knew he was shouting it at the top of his lungs. "The periodic table of the elements, Meg! Say it!"
A picture flashed into her mind of winter evenings spent sitting before the open fire and studying with her father.
(Chapter 9, pages 160-161)
Foreshadowing
There are many examples of foreshadowing in A Wrinkle In Time. Read the passage below and see if you can describe how the author uses foreshadowing to give the reader clues about what will happen later in the story.
"Wet socks don't bother me. I just didn't like the water squishing around in my boots. Now don't worry about me, lamb." (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."
Mrs. Murry went very white and with one hand reached backward and clutched at a chair for support. Her voice trembled. "What did you say?"
Mrs. Whatsit tugged at her second boot. "I said," she grunted, shoving her foor down in, "that there is" -shove-"such a thing" -shove- "as a tesseract."
(Chapter 1, page 21)
Flashback
Authors use flashbacks to fill in missing information for the reader. This helps the reader understand the action, or the plot of the story. In the passage below, The Happy Medium shows the children how The Black Thing can be overcome. The author uses flashback in this passage.
The darkness seemed to seethe and writhe, Was this meant to comfort them?
Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.
(Chapter 6, page 91-92)
Suspense
Suspense is an important part of the story. When the author creates suspense , the story is more interesting. The reader wants to keep reading to find out what will happen next. There are many suspenseful passages in A Wrinkle In Time. One of the passages where the author creates the most suspense is when the children first arrive on Camazotz, and realize that they must visit CENTRAL Central Intelligence. Read the excerpt below as you think about how the story creates suspense.
The three of them stood very quietly. The doors kept opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and the stiff people hurried in and out, in and out, walking jerkily like figures in an old silent movie. Then, abruptly, the stream of movement thinned. There were only a few people and these moved rapidly, as if the film had been speeded up. One white-faced man in a dark suit looked directly at the children, said, "Oh,dear, I shall be late," and flickered into the building.
"He's like a white rabbit," Meg giggled nervously.
"I'm scared," Charles Wallace said. "I can't reach them at all. I'm completely shut out."
"We have to find father--" Meg started again.
"Meg--" Charles Wallace's eyes were wide and frightened. "I'm not even sure I'll even know Father. It's been so long, and I was only a baby--"
Meg's reassurance came quickly. "You'll know him!" Of course you'll know him! The way you;d know me even without looking because I'm always there for you, you can always reach in--"
"Yes." Charles Wallace punched one small fist into an open palm with a gesture of great decision. "Let's go to CENTRAL Central Intelligence."
Calvin reached out and caught both Charles and Meg by the arm. "You remember when we met, and you asked me why I was there? And I told you that it was because I had a compulsion, a feeling I just had to come to that particular place at that particular moment?"
"Yes, sure."
"I've got another feeling. Not the same kind, a different one, a feeling that if we go into that building we're going into terrible danger."
(Chapter 6, pages 112-113)
Vocabulary
There are some vocabulary words in A Wrinkle In Time that you may not have known the first time you read them. You may have been able to figure out what they meant by reading the other words in the sentence, which is called using context clues. You may also have checked the dictionary or asked a classmate what the words mean. It is a good idea to practice using these words so that you will remember them. Look at the list of words below. Do you know what they all mean?
Chapters 1-4
assimilate
diction
ephemeral
preliminaries
prodigious
relinquish
tangible
tractable
wraithlike
Chapters 5-8
abberation
dwindle
myopic
obliquely
perturbed
precipitously
reverberate
sadist
wheedle
Chapters 9-12
brusquely
distraught
emanate
impenetrable
omnipotent
translucent
transparent
trepidation
Look up any words you can't remember. Then you can practice by clicking the link below to play vocabulary games online.
http://www.lifecenter.net/DrB/lessons/Wrinkle/guides_index.htm
Works Cited and Resources
L'Engle, M. (1973). A Wrinkle In Time. New York: Dell.
Images on pages 3, 10 and glossary:
Classroom ClipArt. (2008). Retrieved from http://classroomclipart.com
Images on pages 1, 2, 4-9, 11-13:
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Discovery Education. (2010).
Retrieved from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/