What is a Hookah?

I have noticed quite a few blogs mentioning drugs and other things in this childrens book. What people really mess up on is in chapter five of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland involves the Caterpillar smoking a long hookah. Students have thought that a hookah was a form of drugs that caused the Caterpillars dreamy state.

However, a hookah is a water pipe that was invented in India and found it’s way to the Middle East and Europe. In those countries, the hookah was viewed as a purer way to smoke because it went through the water before the tobacco or other products reached the lungs. The hookah is not as harsh on the lungs as direct smoking because it passes through water, which has lead to the opinion that hookahs are safer than cigarettes. However, studies have shown that smoking a hookah is the same or even less hazardous to a persons health then smoking a cigarette. The hookah at the time I believe was a foreign object that mystified Europeans. This may have been why Carroll use the hookah for his story. Africa, the Middle East and Asia were all, in a sense a dreamlands for the Europeans, so why not include a hookah? Not to mention children werent as protected back then in the 1800’s.

If you are getting curious and curiouser about where I found this information, it was on Wikipedia and other various sites on the internet.

The Caterpillar

In Chapter five Alice comes upon a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah, who has a habit of saying “Who are you?”. The Caterpillars purpose is trying to help Alice remember who she is, although the case is hopeless, as Alice continues to mess up on all the things that the Caterpillar asked of her. Alice failed at telling the Caterpillar who she was, because Alice did not know who she was though the events that had happened before her encounter with the Caterpillar. Alice then failed to give a reason for having the Caterpillar tell her to explain who he was.

When the Caterpillar told Alice to repeat “You are old, Father William”, Alice is unable to repeat the tale, but does give a different version of the tale, but of course the Caterpillar is displeased. Now I have heard that the Caterpillar is the symbol or voice of wisdom in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, and the he does say some wise things to Alice, but in my opinion is simply annoying.

The Caterpillar telling Alice to keep her temper was pretty good, but how is a young child expected to keep their tempers in check?

Then the Caterpillar saying that he doesn’t know what it is like to change very often and asking if she was content, because she hadn’t changed. Then he told her that she would get used to the creatures in Wonderland getting so easily offended. This is in my opinion is wisdom, because Alice would get used to it despite that she is not used to it right now. The Caterpillar is the symbol of wisdom, but is also annoying in the way he presents his ideas.

The Mock Turtle

In chapter nine we meet the crying and sorrowful Mock Turtle. The Gryphon, like he had done when saying that the Queen was fun, said that the Mock Turtle was not actually sad. The turtle is just mocking in a cruel way those who are truly sad. Then there is the way that the Mock Turtle mocks Alice’s education and he makes fun of all the subjects that she has learned.

Why did Carroll make a character such as this?

The girl that he wrote this book for might have seen this passage as funny for the Mock Turtle to turn every subject into something that sea creatures do. This is actually quite humorous to most children for the Mock Turtle to pick at such details. The fact that the Mock Turtle would pick at the washing at the end of the bill made tha school a good one could mention towards were the real Alice Linndel’s school.

In a way the Mock Turtle resimbales a parent who expects that their child should know everything.

The Mock Turtles name is actually quite acturate because of his nature to mock Alice, either in a simple way or a complicated way that left poor Alice quite puzzled. As it says in the margins of chapter nine, mock turtle soup was made of veal, not turtle. This is the reason why the Mock Turtle sings his song about how beautiful soup is. “Turtle Soup” was the name of the song, and since the turtle is the Mock Turtle, he therefore made fun of turtle soup. The Mock Turtle would also be an example of Carroll pointing towards dreams, because dreams have a habit of mocking real life experiences.

The Caucus-Race

In chapter three, “A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale”, that there was a Caucus-Race that the Dodo suggested.

Could the Caucus-Race be a simple image of how repetitive children are?

First, the animals ruin the mouse’s story about the Normans coming to England, and thus they decide to play a game. This is common for children to lose interest in a lesson or when working and want to go off and play a game. The need to run around around in a circle at random is a common action for kids to play. The animals are now all tired, and so want to know who won.

How is a child expected to know who won?

So therefore, all the animals win, but like all children, they want prizes. One of them says that Alice should give out the prizes, and so they all put pressure on Alice until she gives all of them prizes. This is how all children think, that they should receive prizes from others, but that they should not be the ones to hand out the prizes from there own pockets. Another why of how children think is the need for everyone should have prizes, while if there was a true winner, they would think that only they should get a prize, because they worked for it. While this is fair for all the children, the child will then typically think that is how the world works, giving them a real shock when they get into a high level competition.  Then Afterwards, the animals all gather up and listen to the mouse’s story. This is the children all relaxing and listening to another’s story. Then everything breaks apart and the children go to where ever they want to go, although the creatures go away because Alice talked about how Dinah is so good at killing animals and birds.

The Trial

In chapter eleven the Knave of Hearts has been accused of stealing the Queens tarts, and the King is quite willing to execute the Knave without a fair trial. The White Rabbit has to remind the King the rules and protocol of the trial. In chapter three the mouse tells the tale about how Fury will be judge and jury and condemn the mouse to death. Could this trial by Fury be the same trial that the King is having with the Knave? The King is the judge, and in a way the jury because the creatures that make up the jury will do anything that the King asks them to do. The King does have a temper, but is not furious, and is not all that clever as Fury from the mouse’s tale.

But all the same, the King is eager to condemn the Knave to death. The White Rabbit is the only one who makes sure that the King stays within the bounds of the court. The first two witness’s against the Knave don’t even talk about the Knave himself. But in truth, there is not that much evidence against the Knave, though he does make a statement in chapter twelve that points out he had some knowledge of the letter of the thief by saying that the letter wasn’t signed, which could mean that he had written the letter. In chapter twelve tries to get Alice out of the court by inventing a new rule, and then gets crushed by the fact that if the rule was the oldest, it would have been number one. The King also tries to make some out of the letter which didn’t make any sense at all. The King said that because there was no meaning in the letter would make it easier to understand, and then tried to relate some of the verses with the Knave that could connect the Knave to the Letter. Then the King tells the Queen that she never has fits, on which she throws an inkstand at Bill the lizard. After this event the trial goes out of the Kings hands and the Queen is calling for sentences before verdicts and for Alice to be beheaded.

So then, the tale that the mouse gave in chapter three does relate to the trial that was done in chapters 11 and 12 and that Fury( the King) was going to condemn the mouse( the Knave) to death while being both judge and jury.

The Cheshire Cat

What is the purpose of the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

The smiling, disappearing cat was the first one to describe Wonderland as “mad” and tells Alice why he is mad by his dog/cat comparisons. At other times the Cheshire cat simply gives advise to Alice or asks questions about Alice’s experiences as she journeys through Wonderland. The Cheshire cat always wants specifics from Alice, as we can see from the Cheshire Cat asking were she wanted to go to and saying that she can get anywhere if she walked long enough and asking her if she said ‘pig’ or ‘fig’. But overall the Cheshire Cat gives out logical advise to Alice. The Cheshire cat does what Alice asks, since he did disappear slower when she asked and did tell her were the March Hare lived and the Mad Hatter when she asked who lived around the wood.

The Cheshire Cat also made an appearance before Alice in the croquet game. The Cheshire Cat does not talk much talk, but he does say that he would rather not kiss the Kings hand and stayed but did not talk during the conversation between the King and the executioner. Then there is a part in which Alice say’s “A cat may look at a King”, which may show how insecure the King may be about disobedience to him, though he allows the Queen to go off in her rages. The Cheshire Cat may have stayed long enough to hear the argument between the King and the executioner because the argument did fit in my opinion the Cheshire Cats personality. Although the true point of the Cheshire’s Cat’s appearance does not seem to have any importance to me, it may have some other meaning that I have not found yet.

Could the Cheshire cat be in some abstract way be the ‘voice’ of reason and logic in the sea of madness that is Wonderland?

Maybe, but the Cheshire Cat is simply pointing out to Alice that she is being way to vague and unreasonable. The cat also does the same with the King of Hearts, when the King asked for the Cheshire cat to look away and kiss his hand, both of which are pointless.

Following Alice

In chapter one “Down The Rabbit-Hole”, Alice was falling down and thinking of random things that that she knows or misses. Alice thinks that she could fall through the Earth and land in Australia or New Zealand. She than remembers that they are upside-down and that they would walk with their heads down. This fall down to the center of the Earth could therefore land her in a world where everything is different or the complete opposite than where she came from. Thus, this fall down the rabbit hole could foreshadow her descent into the madness of Wonderland.

The one way conversations so to speak also help form Alice’s personality that the reader could could expect for most of the story. For instance, her ‘want’ to show off her knowledge will show that she does like to talk about things that she knows and what others, in her mind, do not. Then other times she would make an unanswerable questions, accidentally make a question confusing, or try to answer a question and be unable to fully or completely answer the question. This helps make out the typical mind of a young proud child who thinks that he or she can answer any question and come out right.

The conversation down the rabbit hole also at one point also shows that Alice is, as Lewis Carroll pointed out, curious about the world. With both her young curious mind and her incomplete picture of how the world works, allows the creatures of Wonderland to easily make Alice belief in what they say is correct. While I’m talking about the rabbit hole, why does the rabbit hole have so many shelfs and is so crowded? Could these crowded and dense shelfs also be a foreshadowing of the inside of Alice’s mind? But this thought does cancel out some of my argument by saying that her mind is not empty and incomplete but jammed packed full of either ideas, thoughts and desires. One of the desires, just to point out, is the Orange Marmalade. But on the other hand, a crowded or distracted mind is common for most young children.

So therefore, Alice’s mind is incomplete in it’s areas of knowledge,but is distracted by day-to-day life and complications, such as the lack of Orange Marmalade, and therefore sets the right image of girl falling down the recesses of her mind down to a upside-down world of Wonderland.

The Queen of Hearts

This is a blog over the Queen of Hearts’ fiery temper.

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As we can see from the Queen in the first chapter that we meet her in the garden we see that she blows a fit over anything that displeases her. Alice narrowly avoids execution because the King said that she was just a child. Then the queen orders the beheading of the unfortunate gardeners because of their mistake in planting a white rose tree instead of a red rose tree. The rose tree problem just just goes to show how the Queen gets angry about small matters. Then during the croquet game she orders executions left and right over players  missing or going before their turns, or if they beat the Queen. Then there was the Cheshire Cat, and without a backward glance, the Queen gave the order to execute because she was asked to do it. Then during the court session, the Queen was silent for a long time until the Dourmouse spoke and blew up.

Until that one moment, she let the King make the threats. Then one of the oddest things occurred to me. It came to me that this angry, execution happy Queen is the Queen of Hearts. The word hearts makes us think of love and happiness, but the Queen is just the opposite.

Why would Carroll have made the queens attitude to be the opposite of the card type that he choose for her? Prehaps he was trying to show how a woman would sometimes be if placed in a place of power.

But other than making her personality be the opposite of her playing card and the Wonderland that the Queen holds domain over, what other reasons could the Queens playing card being that of a heart be hidden in the story? In the margins Carroll wrote that the Queen was supposed to be a blind and aimless fury, which describes the Queen perfectly. Could the Queen be simliy a funny part for children with an angry Queen, or did the Queen have a darker purpose, or both?

Pat the Apple Digger

In the chapter “The Rabbit Sends In A Little Bill” there was a short conversation between the rabbit and Pat, whose identity we do not know. Pat said that he was digging for apples and the rabbit calls him a goose.

Could Pat the apple digger be a goose?

In Celtic Ireland, the goose was seen as a symbol of hearth and home, which Celtic people felt strongly about. Since the Rabbit was talking about what to do about the arm in the window of the house, this could mean that Pat is possibly a Goose. But since Carroll does not give us who Pat is, this is just a guess. Then there is the part about Pat digging for apples, which makes no sense to us. But in the margins of The Annotated Alice, Irish Apples was eighteenth hundreds slang that meant Irish potatoes. So then Pat the ‘apple digger’ could be digging up potatoes. But why would Carroll make an Irish character in the story?

The Irish economy was dependent on potatoes, but is there a joke behind it, like it says in the margins of the Annotated Alice?

There is the Irish brogue, or a strong accent, the Irish slang and Pats status. Was Carroll prejudice against Irish? From what I could find, he did have a little of Irish blood in him, but I have failed to find if he was prejudice. But the British were and still not in some areas not friends with the Irish, so he could have shared that trait and included a Irish farmer that served a timid white Rabbit. This is just another point of how different our culture is today then Carrolls time and how we don’t understand Carrolls writing.

Mature and Dark Subjects in a Children’s Book?

I have heard the question why there are such dark/harmful subjects in Alice.

There is one article that talks about the caterpillar smoking a hookah and how this sends the wrong impression on children. That is because people back in Carroll’s time did not the dangers of smoking and that smoking was a common pastime. Also in the eighteen hundreds, opium was thought to be a medicine.

There is also the Queens constant need for beheading people for random actions. This might be because death was a common thing in the eighteen hundreds and that there was a rise in crime. This would also explain chapter 11 with the Knave’s trial about if he stole the tarts.

Then there is the death jokes, where Alice thinks of different ways that she could be killed. This would have been common because of the increase in dangerous chemicals and materials that followed the Industrial Revolution and that parents would want their children to be aware.

But there is also when she is falling down the Rabbit-hole and she says that she would tell nobody about her falling, even if she fell off the top of the house, on which she thinks that this is probably true. Alice also has a habit of talking about how great her cat(Dinah) is good at killing animals. Why would Alice continue in bring Dinah into a conversations with the creatures of Wonderland if she knew that they feared and hated cats? Dinah is Alice’s several connections to the real world in Wonderland and that killing of animals was a sport during these time before animal rights becomes a reality.

So in the time period that Carroll writes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and his other works would have no effect on children during his lifetime because of the life style of people in England. Put the complaints come from people who lived during the times of new knowledge and ethics. Therefore, Carroll’s book is not inappropriate for children, but was written for children of a different time.