The Theme of Insecurity and The Main Character in Madeleine L'engle’s a Wrinkle in Time

In the story of “A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle, Meg Murray is a 13 year old child who has a lot of insecurities about her personality and her intelligence. Meg starts off as the “ugly duckling” of the family you could say. She is not smart, or average, or pretty and just does not fit in anywhere. Meg and her youngest sibling, Charles Wallace are the two outliers in this story and are the ones who embark on a rather interesting and long journey. At school, Meg has a very hard time with doing her homework, and teachers always bully her and treat her less than the rest because of the way she reacted to her father’s disappearance. Since Meg never took the disappearance of her father very well, she, with Charles Wallace, her brother, and their friend Calvin went in search of her father, and had to confront the biggest mastermind of the universe know as IT. During this, Charles had to give himself in submission to IT in order to find out where their father was and how to get to him. Unfortunately, during this submission under IT, Charles was lost and it wasn’t until she went through the loose of her brother that we finally see Meg show her true self and her maturity. The decision in which we see Meg fully develop her character is when she goes back to confront IT in order to save her brother, out of love. The factors and experiences that caused Meg to make this choice were: the love for her brother, the maturity she gained though the journey, and her overall understanding of her being special in many ways.

Meg realized it was always her responsibility as an older sister to protect her baby brother, and she feels as though she failed to do her job because of her insecurities. We see through the story that Meg holds a very strong bond with Charles because of their “differences.” Charles likewise has always had empathy for Meg and his mother and could always identify when they are having troubles and when they need him. This kind of bond they had made them closer and stronger because Meg and Charles not only loved each other immensely but also went through the criticisms of people for being different. During their journey, Meg finds herself constantly depending on her brother and his intelligence to overcome obstacles. Even from the beginning of the story we see that Meg was always handholding onto him in order to do something. And while they were in their journey, we can also see that Meg relied on Charles a little too much. L’Engle states, “They could see nothing but drifting whiteness, and the moisture clung to them and condensed in icy droplets. As Meg shivered, Calvin’s grip tightened. In front of her Charles Wallace sat quietly. Once he turned Just long enough to give her a swift glance of tenderness and concern” (L’Engle 50). We can quickly see here that Meg highly depends on Charles’ warmth and leadership to guide her and protect her. And it was not until she realized that her brother was being held under IT’s control that Meg finally takes her position as an older sister and her love and appreciation for her brother was the cause for which Meg finally takes courage and faces her biggest fear: her insecurities. If Charles would not have been taken over, it would have taken Meg a lot more time to finally make her own choices and confront herself to take a bold leadership role but because of how much she loved him, she took this role without a doubt. With this leadership she undertook, Meg finally realizes that she is a special girl because she has the ability to love and this is later going to drive to her ultimate heroic act.

We then see that by the time she has to save Charles Wallace her entire personality has changed, and Meg has already had a huge maturity shift. L’Engle writes, “Please” Meg said. “Please if I’ve got to go I want to go and get it over with. Each minute you put it off makes it harder” (153). As we can see, Meg has already developed a stronger character by this point and is a more independent leader which allows her to take on this task of going back and confronting IT alone because of what she had seen Charles Wallace do for her. What truly made her character stronger though was her love for Charles Wallace and her family and all her friends. When facing IT, she realized that IT was much smarted than she, and had a lot more power than she but Meg knew that there must have been something that she had that IT didn’t. And she started to recall everything that everyone had said to her, and realized that there was something that IT would never have. And this is where she found the strength to overlook her differences and see that despite everything that people may say to her, she still had a lot of people who still loved her. When she confronts IT, we see that, “Love. That was what she had that IT did not have…And she had love for them…If she could give love to IT…” (159). Love was her strength and it was her love for others that lead to the ultimate winning and saving of her brother. Meg says, “Her own Charles Wallace, the real Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to Camazotz, to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable. She could love Charles Wallace.” This was the scene, and the moment in which we see her fully develop. When she realized that she could love, and be loved back, Meg had the courage to overcome the submission of IT and come back to reality, save her brother and become a grown up.

Though Meg had a hard time maturing and developing her character, she also took a decision that could have ended her life, but because she had matured enough to realize what others had done for her, and what a child she always was, she took a position in which she confronted the most dark force of evil to save her brother. It wasn’t until she understood the power she had as a person who loved that she finally was able to win against IT. And this was the biggest contribution to her personal exploration. Meg finally became an adult when she lost the most important person in her life, Charles, and she took that in and grew up. The Meg who was presented at the beginning of the story was a completely different Meg than the one that we were introduced to at first. More than facing IT, Meg faced herself and by facing herself she took a responsibility that no one else could take and she developed as a person because of this.