A Wrinkle in Time

Describe the second stop in their journey?

chapter 5

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The second stop in their journey is in Orion’s Belt. The women calm Meg's 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.

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.”

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. 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.

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!”

Source(s)

http://www.gradesaver.com/a-wrinkle-in-time/study-guide/summary-chapter-5-the-tesseract