Wrinkle In Time Mood

Light Vs Dark

Throughout the first chapter of Madeleine L'engle’s perplexing Newbery Honor winning novel, A Wrinkle In Time, she conveys the two opposite moods of the Light and the Dark. L’Engle uses different type of words to illustrate the two moods. Using these different words she is able to grow from the grim and menacing from the beginning of the chapter, to the delightful and sublime feeling at the end of the chapter. Her wording not only shows what the mood is, but foreshadows what the characters such as Meg Murry and Charles Wallace Murry are actually feeling.
In the opening paragraphs that start of the novel, Madeleine L’Engle, is describing a thrashing October storm. She describes the peril emotion going through Meg’s mind, and the unnerving weather outside. Using different types of frightening words to describe the weather and how Meg at the moment is feeling, we can believe that the mood at the beginning of the story is dark, with a sense of fear.

When Mrs.Whatsit arrives at the Murry’s home, everybody has a different feeling of it. It’s as if the mood/tone at that time was awkward. Charles Wallace knew Mrs.Whatsit giving a shock to Meg and Mother, as they did not he befriended a tramp. Meg feels rather irate at Mrs.Whatsit for invading their home and knowing Charles Wallace. Meg irritated said in her mind “this old woman comes barging in on us in the middle of the night”, and “she’s certainly no one Charles Wallace ought to be friends with”. Mrs.Whatsit’s actions only added to the awkwardness of the situation. When her boots come splurging out with water and she’s falls out of her chair, startling the children. The mood turns very suspicious as soon as Mrs. Whatsit stated, “There is a thing called a tesseract”. Mother turns white and the children are anxious to know what it means. When Madeleine L’Engle closes this tangled chapter, the mood is mysterious and curious about the