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Characters

Primary human characters

Meg Murry

Margaret "Meg" Murry is the outcast of the family and also the oldest child of scientists Alex and Kate Murry. Mathematically brilliant but less than adept at other subjects in school, Meg is "awkward", unpopular, and defensive around authority figures as well as her peers. Although she has the brains to accomplish difficult tasks, she rarely puts her strengths to use. She loves her family, especially her brother, Charles Wallace, and longs desperately for her missing father. Like many adolescent girls, Meg is unhappy with her physical appearance, particularly her mouse-brown, unruly hair, braces and glasses, and considers herself a "monster" in comparison with her mother. She is about fourteen years old, and is "several grades" below Calvin, who is fourteen years old but in eleventh grade. Introduced on the first page of the book, she is the story's protagonist.

Charles Wallace Murry

Charles Wallace Murry is the youngest Murry child, the most extraordinary and the most vulnerable of the novel's human characters, and the youngest to journey to Camazotz. Charles Wallace did not talk at all until he was nearly four years old, at which time he began to speak in complete sentences. Now five years old, Charles Wallace seldom speaks to anyone but his family, but can empathically or telepathically "read" certain people's thoughts and feelings, and has an extraordinary vocabulary. A biological "sport," he is intellectually curious, loving, and unfazed by extraordinary people and events. He was the first to meet the Mrs W's and brought Meg to see them. Initially able to block IT out of his mind, he opens himself to the Man with Red Eyes and thus falls under IT's control. He first appears in Chapter One.

Calvin O'Keefe

Calvin O'Keefe is the third oldest of Paddy and Branwen O'Keefe's eleven children, a tall, thin, red-haired 14-year-old^[4] high school junior who plays on the school basketball team and is one of the popular boys in high school. Neglected by his own family, Calvin joyfully enters the lives of the Murry family, starting in Chapter Two. He shows some signs of being able to communicate telepathically the same power charles Wallace seems too have, a technique referred to in later books as kything. He also feels as if he has been hiding his true self all his life, and likes the Murry family much more than his own, which is characterized by abuse and dysfunctional dynamics.

Primary immortal characters

The three characters of Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which are angelic beings who have the ability to travel at will across large stretches of time and space by dematerializing and rematerializing. They do not have a fixed physical form, but appear to humans as elderly women. However, they are capable of metamorphosing into other creatures. All of them are millennia old. Mrs. Whatsit in particular was engaged in war with The Black Thing.

Mrs Whatsit

Mrs Whatsit is first described as an elderly woman wrapped in layers of clothes and first appears in chapter one. Charles Wallace, a five year old boy in the book, found her in a 'haunted house' in the woods, where she has been living with her two friends, Mrs Who and Mrs Which. Mrs Whatsit is the youngest of the Mrs W's (despite being over 2 billion years old), and the best of the three at interacting with the children.

In Chapter Four, the group (Charles Wallace, Calvin, and Meg) witnesses the physical transformation of Mrs Whatsit into a centaur-like winged being on the planet Uriel. Mrs Whatsit is also revealed to have been a star that sacrificed itself by exploding in order to destroy a section of the Black Thing.

Mrs Who

Mrs Who is described as a plump woman with spectacles. She is seen quoting in Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese and Greek. She also quotes William Shakespeare and the Bible repeatedly. Mrs Whatsit explains that Mrs Who finds it "difficult to verbalize" in her own words. She is first introduced in Chapter Two.

Mrs Which

Mrs Which is the oldest of the Mrs Whatsit's friends, and the most authoritative, although she interacts less with the children than do Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who. Introduced at the end of Chapter Three, she is normally seen as little more than a shimmer of light or a shadow. Mrs Which seldom fully materializes, but in human form she resembles a stereotyped witch in black robe and peaked hat, probably a pun of "which" and "witch". She finds it hard to think as a corporeal being. In Chapter Five, she accidentally takes Charles, Meg, and Calvin to a two-dimensional world. Her speech is written with doubled letters, and described as "authoritative"; she admits that "thee llanguage of worrds" is difficult for her. Nevertheless, Meg quickly decides that she is "someone in whom one could put complete trust."

IT

IT is the bodiless telepathic brain that dominates the planet of Camazotz. IT controls all the people in Camazotz and makes people often do same things together in a mechanistic synchronicity as if they were robots. IT speaks through The Man With Red Eyes and later through Charles Wallace, and is functionally part of the interstellar cloud of evil called the Black Thing. IT is described as slightly larger than a human brain. Housed near the "CENTRAL Central Intelligence" building, IT is said to pulse and quiver on IT's dais. IT's aim is to enforce absolute conformity on Camazotz, with the claimed benefit of eliminating war, unhappiness and inefficiency. However, IT is aware of cruelty, referring to "ITself" as "the Happiest Sadist".

Secondary human characters

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Murry

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Murry is an astrophysicist, researching the mysteries of the space/time continuum, specifically five-dimensional means of travel between planets. He is also the father of Meg, Sandy, Dennys and Charles Wallace. He has been missing for some time as the novel opens. Not even his government colleagues know where he is. His first name is revealed in the fifth and last Time novel An Acceptable Time. In the television adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, he is renamed Jack. He first appears in a flashback in Chapter One.

Dr. Katherine (Kate) Murry

Dr. Kate Murry is a microbiologist, wife of Dr. Alexander Murry, and mother of the four Murry children. She is considered beautiful by the Murry children and others, having "flaming red hair" and violet eyes. Her physical attractiveness, academic and scientific accomplishments give Meg a bit of an inferiority complex. She is introduced in Chapter One, and usually referred to as Mrs. Murry. As in her husband's case, her first name is given in the subsequently published An Acceptable Time. The television version of her character is renamed Dana.

Alexander (Sandy) Murry

Sandy Murry and his twin brother Dennys are the middle children in the Murry family, older than Charles Wallace but younger than Meg. They are 10 years old at the time of this book. Sandy is named after his father, Dr. Alex Murry. Although they are certainly intelligent, Sandy and his twin are considered the "normal" children in the family: B students, good at sports, and well able to fit in with their peers. Of the twins, Sandy is generally the leader, and the more pragmatic of the two. He and Dennys first appear in Chapter Two.

Dennys Murry

Dennys Murry is the twin of Sandy Murry. Dennys and his twin are usually inseparable, with Dennys generally following Sandy's lead. However, Dennys is slightly less skeptical than his brother about the strange theories and even stranger adventures of Meg and Charles Wallace. (Note: The name Dennys is a shortened version of "Dionysus",which is the name of a Greek god, but is pronounced the same way as the more common spelling Dennis.)

Supporting alien characters

The Happy Medium lives in a cavern on a planet in Orion's Belt. Human in appearance, she is described as wearing a satin gown and a silk turban, and uses a crystal ball to look at distant places and people. Her title comes from the character's jolly temperament, and her preference for looking at happy things. She is introduced in chapter five. (The name "Happy Medium" is a pun alluding to the common expression for reaching an acceptable compromise: "to find a happy medium.")

Aunt Beast is a character who takes care of Meg on the planet Ixchel after Meg is "frozen" by the Black Thing. Introduced in chapter ten, the character has four arms, no eyes or mouth, and numerous long, waving tentacles instead of fingers. Tall, gray in color, sightless and telepathic, Aunt Beast has a motherly, nurturing attitude toward Meg. The name Aunt Beast is one that Meg and the alien come up with together, based on the character's perusal of Meg's mind. The character's actual name, if any, is not given.