A Wrinkle in Time - Chapter 5

A Wrinkle in Time

Chapter 5

The Tesseract

The Tesseract

Mrs. Which tells Meg that her father is behind the great darkness that they saw in the sky. Though Meg despairs at this fact, Mrs. Whatsit comforts her and tells her that they would not have brought her here if there was no hope. Mrs. Which then tells them that it is time to “go behind the shadow” and begins to explain how they travel through space and time.

Mrs. Whatsit explains the meaning of the tesseract. Using some illustrations and diagrams, Mrs. Whatsit shows them how they “wrinkle” time and space, making travel between great distances easy and quick. The tesseract is the fifth dimension of space, a dimension the children can travel through meaning that “a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.” It was a concept Meg’s parents have been working on for a tremendous amount of time. Meg understands the concept for a brief second before losing her comprehension. Charles Wallace, meanwhile, seems to understand it completely

They all then begin to disintegrate again, and Meg holds Calvin’s hand. A mistake is made, however, and Meg finds herself feeling crushed and flat. She can’t expand her lungs and her mind won’t work correctly either. She hears the words “Oh, no! We can’t stop here! This is a two-dimensional planet...” and suddenly Meg is thrown through time and space once again where she regains her sense of life. Charles Wallace is angry at the women for making a mistake that almost killed them all, but they all laugh because they so rarely make such mistakes and didn’t think about the physical nature of the children.

They tell Meg that the new planet they are on is in Orion’s Belt. They calm her fears that their mother will worry over them by telling her how they created a “time tesser” that will transport all of them back to earth five minutes before they originally left so that no one would even know they were gone, unless something goes terribly wrong. The new planet they are on is gray and nondescript. Mrs. Whatsit tells Meg that they have come to see the Happy Medium and that she will show them their own planet.

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• Deep within a cave, next to a fire, they meet the Happy Medium, a woman dressed in a long, purple satin gown holding a crystal ball. They all introduce themselves and Mrs. Whatsit tells the Medium to show the children their own planet. The Medium doesn’t want to because she’d rather look at things that are more “delightful,” but Mrs. Which tells her that soon there “will no longer be so many pleasing things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.”

When Calvin asks who the fighters had been, Mrs. Who relates a quote: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Charles Wallace recognizes this as Jesus, and Mrs. Whatsit tells him yes, along with other great artists and scientists and thinkers such as da Vinci and Shakespeare and Einstein, as well as Buddha, Beethoven, Rembrandt, and St. Francis.

In the crystal ball, the children can see their own planet, but it is clouded by the Darkness they had seen earlier. Meg asks if it had just shown up, and Mrs. Whatsit tells her that it has actually been there for a long time. This explains why Planet Earth is so deeply troubled. They tell her that this Dark Thing is Evil, the “Power of Darkness,” but that their planet had been instrumental in fighting the Darkness through time.

Meg is still very upset and wants to find her father, and Mrs. Whatsit tells her that they are going to a “planet that has given in.” The Happy Medium cannot stand to look at the crystal ball any longer, and tells the children to “watch!”