Tag Archives: Adulthood

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Alice in WONDERland

In Lewis Carroll’s story of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, Alice seems to always have her mind wondering about everything. When Alice wonders about everything, her thoughts tend to come out very bluntly or simplistic. Alice talks to other characters in such a deeming way in which she believes she knows everything. Although Alice is quick to judge other characters, her intentions are not malicious; I believe it is because of her simple mind. With a simple mind, it may be hard for Alice to understand her own words that come out of her mouth.

Alice would like to be an adult but her actions simply do not convey that notion. She is easily persuaded to do as told or do things out of rash decisions. When it came down to eating or drinking those “new” foods, she gladly just took them without thinking about the consequences. Her road to adulthood will be a long one because throughout the book, Alice gave off “typical high school teenager” vibe to her.

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Little Annie’s Ramble

Little Annie’s Ramble, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story to me that seems one way yet as you continue to read it, it shed light on such a darker tone. In a way, this story can give off two different vibes, an innocent on as well as a darker one. With the darker version, the reader can get a perverse feeling towards that man who is so infatuated with Annie. While going through the streets, the man mentions that “there are a few grown ladies that could entice me from the side of little Annie,” which in a way sounds extremely creepy due to the fact that it seems as though the man in more interested in a little girl. The man is too infatuated with the little girl that even grown women seems to show no interest for him. Does this man know what he is doing and is he doing this on purpose?

For a more innocent approach, one can read this story as a man simply enjoying the company of a young child just so he can enjoy his childhood once again or perhaps the feeling of having a daughter. He takes her off to an adventure just like how any dad would take his daughter out to spoil her. But then again, why didn’t he tell her mother of the adventure?

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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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Little Annie’s Ramble – Ignorance of the Child

Little Annie’s Ramble by Nathaniel Hawthorne was literally a ramble about his love for this child named Annie. He seemed to think lowly of everything but Annie. In his eyes, Annie, this “child”, was just a pure thing in which he missed in his life. I feel that that is so because at the very end, he said, “As the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts…” This basically means that Annie was the thing that could revive his life and allow him to feel more at peace and free; to experience his boyhood again. Throughout the story, he kept going on and on about how pure and beautiful Annie was. She was beautiful because he thought she didn’t know anything negative about the world and that she wasn’t tainted by the evil and the bad. He wished her to disregard him if he started moralizing. This is because he believed she didn’t know right from wrong. Around the middle of the story as well, he said she would rather pay attention to the dolls rather than to the queen, king or knight. In his point of view, she was a child that knew nothing and couldn’t understand anything but her desires for the pretty things and toys such as dolls. He liked her better that way because him, as an adult, knew too much and all the dark things he knew as well caused him to feel that life was not that great and that he would be better off like Annie, who didn’t know much. It is as the saying goes, “Ignorance is bliss.” In this case, Annie is the ignorant one in the narrator’s point of view and the narrator is the one that wishes to be ignorant, to have the bliss that he feels the child has. He misses that ignorance and that bliss.