Daily Archives: 12 Oct ’14

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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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Alice in Wonderland

Before reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I did some research on Lewis Carroll himself. I found that “Lewis Carroll” is a pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll chose a pen name because he valued his privacy. He was  a man with many interests, including religion, mathematics, photography, science, and children literature. It is said that he lit up around children, having an immense love for children’s stories. Alice in Wonderland was Carroll’s biggest success, and Alice herself is based off a real child that Carroll loved; his dearest child friend, Alice Pleasance Liddell. There is much debate over his relationship with young Alice, as well as his mental state while writing Alice in Wonderland. After researching Carroll further, my sources state that the well known rumour that Carroll had written Alice in Wonderland while under the influence of hallucinogenics is false.

It isn’t farfetched to assume that Carroll may have been on shrooms or LSD while writing Alice in Wonderland. Alice jumps from situation to situation quite bizarrely, and it is sometimes hard to keep up with the conversations she is having with the Wonderland animals. While reading Alice in Wonderland, I found myself thinking that this was nonsense. Alice would answer questions in a way that made no sense, things would happen randomly, and everything seemed to be unorganized and scrambled. But, also while reading, I found myself liking Alice’s character. She is creative, witty, and almost relatable in a strange way. I believe Alice could represent the inner nonsensical child in each of us, but she is not my favorite character.

My favorite character is the Cheshire cat. At first I was confused what a Cheshire was, so I looked it up and found it is defined by Mariam Webster as: Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England, in the United Kingdom. The western edge of the county forms part of England’s border with Wales. This concept of coming from another country could play into the whole idea if imperialism in Alice in Wonderland. The Cheshire cat has a huge grin on his face, and often poses philosophical questions to Alice. Carroll must have had a love for cats, because cats mentioned by Alice in the first chapter, as she has one herself, whom she loves. Cats represent mischievous charters in not literature.

 

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Alice’s Transition to Adulthood

Lewis Carroll’s story of  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is jam-packed with situations in which Alice must make a simple decision.  This “simple” decision oftentimes involves mysterious foods and liquids; and whether or not to consume them.  Alice tends to eat/drink whatever is offered to her just because she was told to do so.  She doesn’t consider the consequences and more often than not has to deal with them.

As Alice ingests these foods she would either shrink or grow by tremendous amounts.  This growth/decrease in size represents Alice going through puberty in real life.  As Alice’s size constantly changes throughout the story so does her mindset.  Alice is not ready to become an adult just yet and regularly cries as she keeps changing from big to small and then back again.

Since Alice cannot  come to terms with becoming an adult and all the responsibilities that go along with that, she shows typical adolescent behaviors.  She is insensitive to the feelings and anxieties of others.  She demonstrates an over inflated sense of self and superiority, when comparing herself to others.  She is also moody, temperamental, and cries in response to change.  At length Alice seems to come to terms with the challenges that she is facing.  She realizes that she is in the middle of a dream and that she will eventually wake up to a new and familiar sense of normalcy.

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Alice’s One-Way Thoughts

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice has a one-track mind. All her thoughts are known to readers and she says things rather bluntly and honestly as she usually always states her opinions to the other characters. The only times when she doesn’t necessarily say her true feelings are when she knows her life would be in jeopardy as a result. She also always does whatever she has to in order to reach her goals. She’s quick to comment on the other characters’ behaviors as well if she disapproves. One example that shows Alice’s honest comments on others is when Alice tells March Hare that “it wasn’t very civil of [him] to offer [the wine]” (96) when there isn’t any wine. She does always try to say things in a respectful manner and in that quote, she does so. However, although she’s quick to say the March Hare isn’t civil, she doesn’t seem to be accepting when others point out her faults. When the March Hare replies that it also wasn’t very civil of her to sit with them uninvited, she claims that the table doesn’t belong to the March Hare and the others and that it can seat more people than just them. In her reply, I feel that she has a one-track mind because she tries to justify all her actions without really taking the other characters’ words to heart. The March Hare said it was uncivil of her to sit with them because she wasn’t even invited but her retort of the ownership of the table was completely irrelevant to the claim the March Hare made. In this sense, I feel that she just tries to justify herself and she’s not so great a listener because she already has thoughts of her own as to how things should be and because she seems to think that what she perceives as right should be what others perceive as right, making her have a one-track mind.