"A Wrinkle In Time" Chapter 1 Note

Mrs. Whatsit On a dark and stormy night, twelve-year-old Margaret Murry sits on the foot of her bed in the attic and watches the storm. Except for her, everyone in the house, including her twin brothers Sandy and Dennys, and her baby brother Charles Wallace, is asleep. Meg has had a bad day at school and cannot stop thinking about it. She is also upset about the fact that her father has gone missing. The …

…in the Murry family, no pressure is exerted on Meg and Charles to be like other children. Mr. and Mrs. Murry are content to allow them to be themselves. The importance of this will become clear later in the novel. The first chapter also gets the plot moving, and supplies two touches of mystery: the unexplained fact that Mr. Murry is missing, and the introduction of a term that will not be explained until later.