At the end of the book, love wins out over soullessness and hate; Meg matures and shows her competency; the Murry family is reunited; and Mrs. Whatsit, Who, and Which, their task completed, disappear.
This is a far cry from the book's beginning. At that point, Mr. Murry had disappeared, distressing his wife and children and causing gossip in the village. Meg, an adolescent, doesn't think she can do anything right as the novel opens—even her hair refuses to curl correctly.
With the help of Mrs. Whatsit, Who, and Which, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace are able to tesser—or use wrinkles in time—to travel to Camazotz to rescue Mr. Murry. However, they have to leave behind Charles Wallace, whose mind has been possessed by IT. It is up to Meg to save him on a solo journey, which she successfully does by realizing her love for him is stronger than any other force.
By the end of the novel, Meg has matured. Rather than displaying incompetency, she succeeds at a daunting and adult task in saving her little brother. She learns to rely on herself rather than expecting her father to be her savior. As part of this feel-good ending, the family reunites:
Mr. Murry was running across the lawn, Mrs. Murry running toward him, and they were in each other’s arms, and then there was a tremendous happy jumble of arms and legs and hugging, the older Murrys and Meg and Charles Wallace and the twins, and Calvin grinning by them until Meg reached out and pulled him in and Mrs. Murry gave him a special hug all of his own.
At the end of A Wrinkle in Time, Meg has an internal struggle between rage and love for Charles Wallace, who she sees as fundamentally changed by IT. She is so distraught that she can no longer recognize him, representing her loss of familial social control to IT. This sort of anger, directed at family members for not becoming who they were expected to be, is common. Eventually Meg realizes that this anger was not useful, however. Meg remembers the gifts that the witches gave her. She has love and IT does not. Meg understands that she cannot control who Charles Wallace is, she can only choose to love him as family despite the ways that he has become, in Meg's eyes, evil. This choice to accept Chucky as he is allows him to transform back into Charles Wallace, and a witch saves them both.
The novel A Wrinkle in Time ends with the triumph of good over evil. Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace manage to rescue Meg and Charles's father from the planet in which he was imprisoned, and Charles Wallace successfully overcame the influence of the monstrosity IT—the creature that had imprisoned his father and enslaved the entire planet.
The daring rescue had taken them throughout a much larger universe than they could have imagined, and they were enlightened to the literal...
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battle between good and evil. In the end, they made their contribution to the war by overthrowing IT. The three witches help them return safely to Earth after rescuing their father, and the family is finally reunited, having triumphed over evil.
As the last chapter of the novel opens, Charles Wallace remains trapped in IT. Mr. Murray and Calvin both offer to go rescue Charles Wallace, but Mrs. Whatsit tells them their plans will not work. Meg realizes that she is the only one who can save her brother, but this makes her angry.
Nevertheless, she tessers to Camazotz and goes to the CENTRAL Central Intelligence Building to find Charles Wallace. Mrs. Which had told her that she will defeat IT because she has something IT does not have, but Meg does not know what that is.
She finds Charles Wallace, but instead of feeling love for her brother, she feels anger; IT has such great control of her brother that she barely even recognizes him. She begins to think that maybe anger is what IT does not have, so she focuses on her anger. However, anger does not free Charles Wallace.
Meg begins to realize that anger is negative, just like IT. Love, on the other hand, is positive; IT does not have and cannot understand love. She tries to love her brother rather than feeling anger toward IT. She thinks about what Charles Wallace was like when they were younger, before IT got a hold of him. She lovingly calls to him, and he responds! Meg's love frees Charles Wallace from IT.
Suddenly, Meg is back home with her family--all of her family.