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“Do you think things always have an explanation?” “Yes. I believe they do. But I think that with our human limitations we’re not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”
Mrs. Murry answers Meg’s inquiries about her father and his disappearance with this quotation, setting the tone for Meg’s continued exploration of words and their inadequacy. Throughout the novel, Meg continues to learn just how limiting human communication and conceptions are, like in her conversation with Aunt Beast or her interactions with Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit. Ultimately, Mrs. Murry’s words foreshadow Meg’s surrender of her desire to know and understand everything.
We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.
Aunt Beast responds to Meg’s explanation of seeing with this quotation, furthering the dissonance between her own view of communication and Meg’s. Meg’s interactions with Aunt Beast continue to expand Meg’s view of what understanding and knowledge really are, and Aunt Beast challenges Meg’s trust in words to fully capture the essence of things around her. In this quote, Aunt Beast’s words suggest that there is much more to experiencing and knowing something beyond merely seeing or describing it.
But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words on her own.
Mrs. Whatsit responds to Charles Wallace’s urging of Mrs. Who to stop quoting with this justification, furthering the theme that one’s own words are often inadequate to capture a feeling or thought. Mrs. Who speaks primarily, if not exclusively, in quotations from philosophers, authors, teachers, and other important thinkers from generations past and present. She utilizes a variety of languages, and her communication suggests that employing words from others can give one a sense of catharsis and freedom in communication when simple language fails.
She looked at Meg. “Now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again. Do you understand?” “No,” Meg said flatly. Mrs. Whatsit sighed. “Explanations are not easy when they are about things for which your civilization still has no words.”
Mrs. Whatsit emphasizes the inadequacy of words to describe concepts that are central to the novel’s plot, like tessering. The irony of the title and the book itself is at play, as words are essential to the format of the work, but L’Engle explores this theme within the boundaries of language, using characters like Mrs. Whatsit and concepts like a tesseract to suggest that ideas can exist even if the human explanations for them are evasive.
