Author Archives: artem.kovalchuk

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Alice In Wonderland, Story of a dimwit?

Through out Alice in Wonderland,by Lewis Carroll Alice is always found in an odd situations. These situations cause her question everything that occurs around her and find an explanation if necessary. While her attempt at trying to figure out what is happening to her is a sign of intelligence, her thoughts themselves end up being just as nonsensical or odd as the situation she is in. Alice’s thoughts begin in a reasonable place but she loses focus and her thoughts stray from their origin. Worse yet when she encounters a problem she failed to solve on her first attempt she becomes discouraged and cries.On the other hand even while she is in this state she actually still tells herself to keep a level head and think things through. This could be attributed to her age(which is believed, by scholars, to be seven based on her age in the sequel stories) but since her age is never explicitly stated one could argue against this. There is one scene in particular that shows just how dysfunctional Alice’s thoughts are. When she is at the white rabbits and she grows enormous, she takes talks about growing up but thinks that because her height is already larger than it should be she assumes she has already grown up. This shows she attributes aging to her height and nothing else. This scene immediately made her appear like a dimwit.

While Alice does not regularly have brilliant thoughts, or the ability to keep one thought in her mind for too long, she does display at least one good trait: the ability to learn. This is shown whenever she is in a situation that alters her physical height. When she first turned small she knew that she had to find something else to eat in order to change to her normal height. This is the only consistent thing in her thinking. Whenever she finds her height changed she knows she must eat something to alter her height.

 

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Little Annie’s Ramble: Two stories in one

Little Annie’s Ramble, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, on the surface appears to be a story about a little girls stroll through town with her adult neighbor, who is also the narrator.The two visit various locations that would attract a child’s attention such as a bakery and a toy store. The “ramble” comes to end when the town crier begins to alert the towns people of a missing girl and the narrator realizes he left with Annie without telling her mother.

This story can be interpreted from the perceptive of an adult man who gets so absorbed in a child’s world that he nearly forgets he himself is an adult at one point. The narrator in this interpretation is just a man who has more admiration for childhood rather than the child. The narrator ends up finding his own childhood in his ramble with little Annie. This could be what causes him to forget to tell Annie’s mother that he went on a walk with her.

The second interpretation is more dark since an adult could easily take the narrators jovial attitude towards Annie as perverse. There is one line in particular that makes the narrator look like a pedophile:“there are few grown ladies that could entice me from the side of little Anllie”. This line makes it sound like the narrator would prefer the company of a little girl over that of a grown woman. In addition, while the narrator claims to have forgotten to tell Annie’s mother he was with her, one could assume he did not tell her on purpose.

This is a rather conflicted text, at least for adults, since it can have various innuendos and interpretations.

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The Pleasures of Children’s Literature

The excerpt from Perry Nodelman and Mevis Reimer’s text focuses on the relationship children actually have with children’s literature. In addition, it also explores how adults interaction with children’s literature differs from that of children and what causes these differences. One of the main differences comes from the literary “repertoire” that adults have versus the one children have. Adults tend to have a greater understanding of both language and its use.Furthermore adults can apply their past knowledge and experience towards the literature. This causes adults to have a different understanding and view of the literature. Adults would would be able to draw more from a children’s text because they have the capacity to. Children do not or rather cannot see more in a children’s text because their literary “repertoire” is limited. In this sense, Nodelman and Reimer point out that it is actually to difficult to decide what kind of children’s literature should and should not be read to/by children. In addition adults are the ones who inevitably decide what is considered “appropriate” literature for children. They do so based on their own hypothetical guess’s of what children would like in literature. Nodelman and Reimer  state this is not effective since the adults are making guess’s and cannot really know what the child might like in literature without actually being exposed to it. A child’s lack of knowledge allows him/her read any children’s literature and end up enjoying it. I think Nodelman and Reimer make an excellent point: adults should not decide what is considered “good” children’s literature for children. They themselves are no longer children and cannot interpret  it the same way a child does. What adults may consider  inappropriate is therefore irrelevant since a child may not even know that what they are reading can be viewed in that context.