The Alice Project Experience.

This COVERITLIVE event sums our Alice Project Experience up. It includes our academic progression throughout the project as well as our opinions as Alice critiques.

Must everything have symbolism, even if it is subconscious symbolism?

The Aftermath

You Were There…and You, and You, and You!

This blog was inspired by Angela Wiseman’s post, http://aliceproject4.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/where-is-the-rabbit-going”

If you’ve seen A Christmas Carol starring the Scrooge, you know he is visited by three ghosts of Christmas. Three ghosts that may be very beneficial to himself molding his future. His future seems to be destined because of the fact that he is even visited by these ghosts. Scrooge is a grumpy, old man who has no Christmas spirit. During the night he is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. They show and explain to him what may happen to his life if he continues with his bitter, careless attitude. They show him all the ruthlessness he has committed and also what will happen in the future; a lonely death with no one to even care.

Oh, and here’s the catch: after he realizes what a horrible, cruel life he has been living…he wake up from his dream! After he awakens from a self-induced dream of morality, he goes on to slowly repair his life.

Alice on the other hand has a dream of imagination, playfulness, awkward situations, and irony. We don’t know much about Alice out of Wonderland, only that she seems to be a little girl with an adventure side. Well we can’t really be sure of that fact because it’s all a dream. Perhaps non-Wonderland Alice was the opposite of the story. Like Scrooge, maybe her self-induced dream was to teach herself the morals that she subconsciously knew she needed to learn? She could have been a child too stuck in reality, morbid perhaps. Her dreams surely taught her to imagine and dream. I mean what is a childhood without an imagination?

Movie Ticket: $7. Popcorn: $4. Freedom to Imagine: Priceless.

In Lewis Carroll’s story, doesn’t Alice just seem like an inquisitive, cute little girl?

Disney twists this base a bit when Alice is played by a woman seeming unwilling to fall into the rabbit hole. Just the fact that she is played by a woman instead of a little girl takes away the naiveté that Carroll’s Alice needed to even faintly understand Wonderland. Carroll’s Alice really does begin as an innocent little girl with wonders, she makes the decision of jumping down the rabbit hole to chase the white rabbit. Some might this a childish instinct, but maybe its just the key to life, the key to freedom.

Everyone has got to jump down that rabbit hole sometime in their lives.

The story somehow persuades taking risks, ‘live a little’. In the new movie, your creativity is pretty much lost when they put the pictures in your head. Of course that is the point of watching a movie, but we all know the book is always better. I think Carroll wrote the book to allow children to express themselves, to make Wonderland whatever they want it to be.  In the movie trailer, Wonderland seems to be a dark, creepy place; but in Carroll’s story the setting is never really described. It just is what you make it.

The new 2010 Alice movie isn’t out yet, but that gives us the freedom to theorize: How differently can the impact a story gives on people be with the same characters and situations, when you tell(or rather, show) them what to imagine?

There isn’t much freedom is there?

Carroll’s Consistency

Alice continues to be introduced to peculiar fact after peculiar fact. Each one warping her former world a bit more. With Carroll being consistent in his illogical logic, everything Alice has known is at risk of being twisted, turned, molded into the ‘Wonderland normal’. Her size is at constant fluctuation, animals are in the position of humans, there are questions without answers and answers without questions.

Carroll’s consistency has made it easier for the reader to continue the story without a double take. It causes us as readers to be in Wonderland, it won’t be a surprise when pots, pans, and even noses are flying through the air right? Wrong; talking rabbits, body-morphing cakes and potions, and mock turtles are never going to be completely normal to people of any common intellect or sense. We are all ‘mad’ in the fashion that we each have our own peculiar personalities that shape ourselves. There isn’t really a definition for mad is there? Only that it is what we as individuals see as deranged, insane and/or unwise.

Carroll plays with the idea of what each individual reading the story will create through past experiences and previous knowledge, all with no restrictions in Wonderland. The fact that his ‘logic’ creates a pattern exemplifies Wonderland’s potential to become a reality not only for Alice, but the reader. Personally, as a child I was confused by the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland, but now that I have read the book with more knowledge and experience I can pick up the subtle humor and lessons within the story. By noticing Carroll’s pattern of illogical logic, one can realize how easily someone can be tranced with repetition.

mad- adjective

1. mentally disturbed; deranged; insane; demented. 2. enraged; greatly provoked or irritated; angry. 3. (of animals) a. abnormally furious; ferocious b. affected with rabies; rabid 4. extremely foolish or unwise; imprudent; irrational 5. wildly excited or confused: frantic 6. overcome by desire, eagerness, enthusiasm, etc.; excessively or uncontrollably fond; infatuated 7. wildly gay or merry; enjoyably hilarious 8. (of wind, storms, etc.) furious in violence

–noun 9. an angry or ill-tempered period, mood, or spell: The last time he had a mad on, it lasted for days.

–verb (used with object) 10. Archaic. to make mad.

–verb (used without object) 11. Archaic. to be, become, or act mad.

—Idioms 13. mad as a hatter, completely insane.

The Choice is Yours..

This blog compares the ending of Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

The ending of Lord of the Flies to me was a partial surprise. I’m sure many of us wanted Ralph to get beat up a little after all the build up. It seemed like one of those movie endings where break into sweat when the main character is about to die, but secretly you know he can’t die. If he died, the movie would die. You try to put that fact in the back of your head and go on watching, waiting for that ‘BAM!’ moment, so you can proudly say, “I saw that coming”. After it’s over you realize he couldn’t have died being the protagonist even if you wanted him to. Ralph was certainly beat up quite a bit, but the savage attitude the story brings among us influences us to become part of the story as well. Are you as the reader, going to be a good guy or a bad guy? The choice is yours.

Your choice in Alice: A believer or a non-believer?

If you are the believer, you may enjoy this story. You may like the power to create your own Wonderland, to make the character how you want them. It may make you feel childish again, unlimited thoughts; dreams come to life. Or you may be the believer that doesn’t want to believe, the creepy idea of an alternate universe where animals are in authority over humans, well thats how it seems.

If you’re a non-believer, its simple; “I told you so”. Yes, thats what you get to say when you finish reading the book or watching the movie. It was all a dream, but even deep down a non-believer could yearn for that wink. That wink at the end of a movie when you know it was all fiction, but then you see something from the ‘dream’ in the reality. Like in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy reminisces back to who was all there in her ‘dream’.

Whether you are a believer or a non-believer there is one common belief: You should enjoy it while your there.

Be What You Would Seem to Be

This post relates to not only Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but also Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

A couple nights ago, I was letting my dog outside. I went out to find him and then I heard the door click shut and to lock. I was locked outside for about two and a half hours before my mom would be home, no phone, no keys, nothing. This reminded me of the boys arriving on the island in Lord of the Flies. When they arrive on the island they made themselves comfortable after freaking out a little bit about being stranded. They take in th beach and enjoy playing without grownups. After a while, they become ‘mad’ almost. They’ve finished enjoying themselves and are ready to go home. This instance felt much closer to me when I was locked in my backyard, of course I could get into my neighborhood but all the same I was locked out of my house. The first thing I did was panic, then I realized it was nice back here, I took my shoes off and sat by the pool enjoying the nice air. As it was getting darker I started to get bored and even scared. I started talking to my dog, not in a weird way just to comfort myself, inquisitive about the noises I heard.

When Alice enters Wonderland through the rabbit hole, she was locked out of her house, or world rather. She was brought into Wonderland by the white rabbit’s lure, but for why she stayed? Of course we all know she stayed because she couldn’t leave, but she was interested, she was full of who’s, what’s, when’s, and where’s? A majority of those answers were favored by Wonderland’s way of life, much different from Alice’s world. She is in Wonderland now, so how must she live? The Wonderland Way. She must act Wonderland, talk Wonderland, live Wonderland. Even though its hard in the beginning, the peculiarity becomes a pattern.

Victorian England

Shane Leslie, for instance, writing on “Lewis Carrol and the Oxford Movement” (in  the London Mercury, July 1933), finds Alice a secret history of the religious controversies of Victorian England.

To begin with, I know none of us or for sure at least not all of us are experts on the Oxford Movement or the history of religious controversies of Victorian England. Through internet research as well as The Annotated Alice, I have acquired the different roles of the characters thought to have been similar to the movement and controversies in England. The Orange marmalade in the cupboard when Alice is falling is thought to represent William III (of Orange). There may be many reasons for this representation besides the obvious ‘Orange’ reference. William and Mary were crowned king and queen of England, destroying the possibility of divine right. William and Mary were understanding of the parliamentary system meaning the power would be divided. In Alice, the Orange marmalade is empty. Perhaps the marmalade symbolized the power which was divided among the parliament and monarch. However the marmalade also could have symbolized the sympathy that William had for Catholics, which was none.

Though there are endless relations between Alice and the outside world, this instance seems to be one that you must dig deeper in research to understand. I am absolutely sure that Alice relates to almost every form of government in some way. Though each type of government is different, the story provides more than a variety of characteristics of society to choose from.

Wonderland’s Issues vs. Government

As Alice assembles along the shore with all the animals that seem to overrule humans in this Wonderland, they face the obstacle of how to dry themselves. The mouse tells a ‘dry’ tale about William the Conquerer. It is indeed logical to attempt to dry yourself with something dry, but a story? With a failed attempt, the Dodo suggests a caucus race. Could Carroll not only be symbolizing the candidates of an election running around in circles and getting no where, but also the election’s effect on them. An election is a popularity contest, and most often time a dirty fight to win. The animals obviously are not in a dirty fight to win, but to get dry. The candidates of an election seem to be ‘dried’ of the morals and virtue as they battle each other.

After the race, the Dodo says that everybody has won and all must have prizes. The question that arises from this is who will give the prizes? It seems similar to government as well. People complain about the laws and policies of government, about how they do not receive what they should. When people don’t acquire what they need, who do they blame in most cases? The government can account for the most responsibility for the needs of a society’s people. That can almost never be the case, in national governments, the same as schools and offices. In Wonderland, animals have exemplified their authority over humans. Though humans seem to be rarely seen in Wonderland, who is to say the government is not as warped as the positions of Wonderland’ society?

If a Mushroom Was a Mushroom.

“Many readers have referred me to the old book, which Carroll could have read, that describe the hallucinogenic properties of certain mushrooms. Eating fly agaric mushroom poduces hallucinations in which time and space are distorted”

-The Annotated Alice

“We might surmise that neither Tenniel nor Carroll wanted children to emulate Alice and end up eating poisonous mushrooms.”  -Robert Hornback

These annotations really caught my attention. The whole story thus far is based on Alice’s strange encounters. In the beginning, she had difficulty gripping what was going on in this strange place. Wouldn’t eating a poisonous mushroom make it difficult for someone to decifer normality? The annotation states that Carroll may have in fact read books that describe the effects of certain mushrooms if ingested. This may mean that he wrote into the story Alice’s mushroom predicament in order to subtly justify just a fraction of her peculiarity. Throughout the story there has been multiple hints as to why Alice is experiencing these strange situations, or ‘normal’ considering she is in Wonderland.

Hornbeck explains that Tenniel and Carrol did not want the children to imitate Alice after reading the story. Isn’t the story almost an imitation of children in general? True, children do not eat cake and magiacally change sizes. Children do, however, have imaginations. They imagine peculiar occurences, such as things that have actually happened to Alice. When children read this story, they may actually go out and eat a cake, then wait for themselves to change. When children read about Alice changing size as she ate pieces of a mushroom out of either her left or right hands. Tenniel did illustrate the mushroom as a non-poisonous mushroom, however Carroll may or may not have instructed Tenniel to illustrate a specific kind of mushroom. Alice’s experiences seem to concur with the hallucinations present with the ingestion of poisonous mushrooms.

Illogical Logic, Irrational Rationalization.

After Alice eats the cake, she grows more than nine feet tall. She speaks of her feet as if they were not even part of her body, like they were people with their own personalities. She first talks about how she will ship new boots to her feet each Christmas, then she realizes

 ”how funny it’ll seem, sending presents to one’s own feet!”

 She worries about how strange the directions will look when sending something to her own feet before even realizing the logic of what she is saying. The fact is that this is completely illogical and only begins this trend. She is aware that it is indeed strange of her to speak of the nonsense in sending boots to her own feet.

When she cannot get into the garden once again, she begins to cry. She begins to scold herself irrationally, as she explained she did earlier when playing a game of croquet with herself. It isn’t that her crying is irrational, after all I would cry if I grew to nine feet tall in a few moments. It’s simply the reason for her crying: growing so much so quickly. Children do not scold themselves. They dread to be scolded. The childish element of this part of the story is that there literally is a pool of tears.

Alice abruptly quits crying when the white rabbit distracts her by returning. She is desperate for help and seems to scare the rabbit away when she asks help of him. She begins to think of the possibilities of why her day has been so unusual. It seems illogical when she wonders,

 ”Who in the world am I?”…and…”if I’ve been changed in the night?”

To think of reason for the day’s peculiarity would be logical. However to be changed into a different person over night? Not so much. This entire story thus far seems like a story of illogical logic, the reason for the rabbit’s rush versus the reason he is even speaking, the solution to Alice’s size issues versus the reason for her changing so radically and Alice’s social inclination to worry about offending someone versus the fact that she has offended a mouse are only a few examples.