What is interesting about the "Black Thing" from A Wrinkle in Time is that it is up for interpretation exactly what the black thing is. Is it alive? Is it a place? Does it represent something else? When the children fly up into the clouds of Uriel and first see the black thing creeping closer and blotting out the stars, they wonder if it's an actual "thing" or a shadow cast by a "thing." Either way, all the children—even young Charles Wallace—know instinctively that it is dreadful and powerful. After they descend back down to to the flower field, they all feel relieved, but then Meg suddenly realizes that the darkness is where she can find her father. Whatever the black thing is, she must have hope and be brave enough to fight against it in order to save him. While darkness generally symbolizes evil, the author purposely makes it unclear exactly what the black thing is, so the reader is free to ponder what it means and what it represents for them in real life.
The black thing that Mrs. Whatsit shows the children from a vantage point above Uriel's atmosphere is evil itself. It looks, however, like a dark cloud, and it blots out the stars. It makes the children feel terrible, tense, and frightened as they gaze at it. As the text puts it, recording Megs thoughts:
What could there be about a shadow that was so terrible that she knew that there had never been before or ever would be again, anything that would chill her with a fear that was beyond shuddering, beyond crying or screaming, beyond the possibility of comfort?
This dark cloud of evil covers Camazotz, the planet the children must visit in order to rescue Meg's and Charles Wallace's father. Mrs. Whatsit wants the children to know what they are up against before they go.
The novel makes clear the fact that the children are battling more than simply an out-of-control technology on a faraway planet. They are engaged in a battle of good versus evil, a battle for their souls.
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