The Ugly Truth
December 1, 2009During Alice’s encounter with the Duchess, she realizes the Duchess’ obsession with morals.
“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it” she says (page 91)
Though many think the Duchess doesn’t make any sense, I find truth in her words. Not in the sense that every little thing that comes out of your mouth has a moral, but the morals themselves.
“Tis’ love that makes the world go round!” or “Birds of a feather flock together.” (page 92)
All of the morals the Duchess talks about are true and there is meaning in them. She is reminding Alice of these universal truths. Alice doesn’t focus on the morals though. She focuses on the fact that they don’t make sense in the context of their conversation, but it’s Wonderland. By that point in time, Alice should understand that not everything will make clear sense, but she should look at the elephant in the room. It may be hard having the truth mixed up with all the nonsense and unexplained happenings in Wonderland, but she should look at the bigger picture to realize what the Duchess is really trying to say. The Duchess serves as a metaphor for Truth. Even though in some situations you may not want to hear the truth, or try and avoid it like Alice is doing, it’s always there staring you in the face.
Alice also describes the Duchess as “very ugly” (page 91). Why does the truth always have to be ugly? Is it because it’s human nature to not want to hear the truth? Or is it because the truth is too hard to face? Society still feels like this. There’s even a movie called “The Ugly Truth” ,so mainstream America is profiting off this fact. Maybe thats why Carroll made this Wonderland. Maybe he covered up the truths and ideas he wanted to convey with the playful idea of a little girl named Alice going on a journey to Wonderland because it is just too hard for people to take the truth at face value. Maybe if we start ignoring the things that don’t make sense in this story and start paying attention to the things that do make sense we will enjoy and understand this book much better and it will be perceived the way Carroll intended it to be.
Christian Long
Katherine H.
Melissa H
Rivu D.
Alex E.
Sylvia A.
I never thought that by having the Duchess being ugly, the truth became ugly. We all know that most of the time, the truth is NOT what we want to hear, but by representing that in the Duchess is a very clever idea. It’s almost like Carroll was trying to plant this tiny seed of thought in our heads without us even noticing. It makes perfect sense, of course, that the Duchess would be ugly, because she is telling the truth. But then whatever happened to all of the old sayings like “the truth will set you free” and so on? Aren’t they supposed to make the truth seem good and beautiful? It’s a very interesting concept you’ve brought up, thank you
I really enjoyed this. It kinda made me think…a little off topic, but why does the truth HAVE to be ugly? And I thought it was rather funny that it was the ugly duchess who spoke true morals…but that’s probably just an over analyzation on my part. But, still…I like the idea that you’re playing with here. I also agree that we focus way too much on what doesn’t make sense. I feel that the book/movie/story in general is better for children, because they don’t really look at the truth of things! They’ll believe it all without question [most of them at least].