Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll - Fantasy

What little girl, once reading about Alice and her adventures in Wonderland, did not want to be Alice? I know that I did. I went through a phase in life when I was little when I desired to drink hot tea from a teacup (just like Alice did at the Mad Hatter’s tea party), where I wanted and pretended to find and eat a little cake labeled “Eat Me” and a little potion labeled “Drink Me” that would turn me to all sorts of sizes, and where I would wonder around the trees in my back yard trying to figure out a way to “fall in” if a certain white rabbit with a time piece should just happen along my path. I wanted to be Alice and to enjoy all the little adventures that she enjoyed. I remember that feeling of disappointment every time I ate a little cake that I was convinced would change my size, and discovered that I was still exactly how I was prior to the “magical” cake. Still, now as a grown-up, I still occasionally look at life through Alice’s eyes. She was a little girl who desired to fill her daydreams and days with mischief and adventure, something that we grown-ups become to “mature” for, but always long to return to. I have always found it interesting that adults cast off children’s imaginations as young and inexperienced. Well, if experience is what causes us to quit believing in that magical place called Wonderland, let me live as innocent a life as possible. Ironically, when I visit homes that house the elderly who are not to long from this world, their imaginations (at least) seem to be back and working in excellent order. We can choose to look at it with sadness or realize that their last days or years will not be filled with the fear of nuclear war, dying family members, peer approval or disapproval, etc. For them, life is different. For them the Mad Hatter has revisited, as well as the White Rabbit, the Cheshire-Cat, the Queen of Hearts (“Off with her head!”), and the Dormouse. Perhaps we “responsible adults” should learn from the very young and the very old and look at the world through the eyes of Alice.

Lewis Carroll wove a delectable fantasy story with his Alice and her Wonderland. Even with Walt Disney stepping in to ruin many children’s opportunities to read the story before seeing the story, I found myself wanting to keep reading and not put the book down (much like Alice wanting to see more and more of this “backwards” Wonderland). Carroll interwove fantasy into real life events and settings. Wonderland was played out in an English Garden, but things in the garden were extraordinary. A cat could talk and give mysterious directions, a caterpillar could make suggestions about how to grow back to a normal size, and a normal tea party would be turned abnormal with a bossy Mad Hatter, sleepy Dormouse, and a stingy March Hare. The reader goes through a series of believing in Wonderland events and settings, only to be introduced to a new Wonderland creature that has human personalities.

One should not read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland without researching a little bit about Lewis Carroll’s life and my book afforded me the opportunity to read more about this man. He was the oldest son with eleven children in his household (usually the oldest son or child in general leads a life of perfectionism and constantly trying to succeed). He was also given the name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson at birth (such an “adult”name) and studied at Christ Church College of Oxford University, where he later taught mathematics and published works of mathematics under his Charles Lutwidge Dodgson name. However, he took on the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll” and published his fantasy works under that name. He was a man who could travel in either reality worlds of mathematics or fantasy worlds of Wonderland. He was a man who defied the idea of “growing up” by creating works such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In other words, he was a true Peter Pan character acting in a Wendy character’s body. Carroll chose to spend time with young girls (in what the author termed an “innocent relationship”) and met a particular Alice Liddell who seems to have inspired the main character of our Alice (Lin, 2004).

Wonderland seems like a fantastical place and to we who defend the “reality of life” ideas, it is a fantastical place filled with mischief and nonsense. However, I do pause to wonder (no pun intended), if Wonderland was real, even if only to Carroll and to little children everywhere who are still searching for that enchanted rabbit hole!