Being the most prolific example of what
some would call the 'nonsense' genre, Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland is a rich haven of romantic symbollism. I can't tell you
how much fun I had analyzing all the different events in the book,
trying to make sense out of nonsense. The truth is that anyone who
has managed to graduated from primary school can sit there and
discover hidden message after hidden message, the lake of tears, the
grinning cat, the hedgehog croquet balls, I could have gone
absolutely wild when studying the intentions behind this book.
But I didn't, because in reality we
already know Lewis Carrol's intention, he wrote the story in order to
entertain specific little girls whom he knew individually, so what
would be going inside this man's head as he is writing this story?
Everyone knows what it's like to try to entertain children, it's a
little daunting, because if you're boring them they'll soon let you
know it, so entertainment had to have been one of the major factors
that he wanted to bring to the tale, and indeed he certainly managed
it, the bright and crazy world of Wonderland would have any child
around that age on the edge of their seats, but does this mean that
the symbolism of the book is arbitrary? Hmm, that I'm not so sure
of.
Whilst writing this book, Lewis must
have spent the majority of the time following his instincts, for only
your instincts can lead you down a rabbit hole, through a shrunk
door, and down the lane to play croquet with a sentient pack of
cards. If all of that came from serious thought, Carroll would have
been a lunatic. But there is wisdom and meaning in that kind of
visceral artistic mess, a child might run his red paint brush across
a sheet of paper angrily, not rather knowing what he's doing, and the
image on the paper would be deemed valueless, but if you ask some
people, the single, jittery brush of red symbolizes the child's
strike of anger, of course, the kid was probably just bored. The
point is, nothing is nothing, and everything is something, I believe
that Carroll wrote this story with no great intention other than to
entertain the children he adored, but hidden within that intention
are the originators of his seemingly random ideas.
Let's put a pin in that, because for a
very short while I want to address a point that many who read this
article may find lacking, this is the idea that Lewis Carroll was a
pedophille. It's not very difficult to see why the idea has become so
popular, it's dramatic, it puts a disturbing twist on the story we all (vaguely) know. The idea of Carroll writing this story
for children whom he was sexually attracted to, perhaps as a
substitute for the impulses which he could never act on. But, let's
cast that aside, because to put it bluntly, it's bullshit. The reason
why people believe this is because Carroll used to take naked
photographs of the children he knew, but what people fail to realize
is, in the nineteenth century, naked children were not a problem. In
modern society we teach children that their bodies are shameful and
should be hidden, but in Carroll's time naked children were on
postcards, it was completely normal. The photographs he took were
always in an outdoor environment, he loved to have them be near trees
or plants, undoubtedly because the theme of his photography was
nature and purity.
Anyway, I'll waste no more time on that
deluded theory, let's find that pin shall we? If Carroll was writing
for these children, his motive certainly would have been to entertain
them, but it soon becomes clear reading the book that he couldn't
help but use the story as a way to teach the children things he
thought they ought to know. “If you drink from a bottle marked
poison, it is almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later,”
he writes early on, one can imagine he worried about the little girls
drinking something dangerous and used this as an opportunity to teach
them that. So with this established, are there any other lessons for
children in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?
Well, like I've said before, you could
go crazy with the imagery, but I do think that the personality of the
characters Alice meets are something of a warning from Carroll about
what people in the real world can be like. “We're all mad here,”
the Cheshire Cat grins, indeed growing up it often feels that
everywhere we turn, people are mad, and that we are the only sane
person left. This isn't a story where the girl runs around and has
fun with every creature she meets, Alice has trouble understanding
the motives of the others, she goes from creature to creature never
really managing to fit in and always finding conflict, whether it's
involving herself or not. When she meets the mouse, she finds a
conflict that she has never noticed was there, that is the one
between a mouse and a cat, Alice loves her cat Dynah, but feels great
sympathy for the mouse, she learns that, like anything in Wonderland,
conflict is not simple, and there is no good or bad side, sometimes
it is simply there as part of the natural havoc of the world.
After she drowns in her own tears,
converses with the mouse, watches as the critters engage in a
pointless contest of which nobody wins, Alice makes a curious
statement, she says that the room around her has changed of it's own
accord, whilst she wasn't paying attention, her surroundings have
transformed. You may call me overzealous but I do think this was
written by Carroll to teach the children that their world will
change, as you grow up, the aura of everything around you transforms
completely, you can be in the same room you were in when you were
four and feel like it was a whole other universe. The room had
changed because Alice had changed due to her experience.
The most interesting message I picked
up from the book is “Don't trust them.” As a child, you almost
have no choice but trust the people around you, you are still
discovering the world yourself, and this is exactly the situation
Alice finds herself in. After the lake of tears, when the animals are
trying to figure out what to do to dry themselves, they are all
absolutely useless, each one of them radiates a sense of authority,
that they know what to do, but they never do manage to dry themselves
or anyone else, and Alice is wasting her time by listening to them.
They organize a race which nobody wins, they do no thinking, but
continue to act mindlessly. Let's face it, that's the majority of
adults isn't it? Children do more thinking than adults, and often,
they are much smarter.
As a writer, the most valuable thing
I've learned from reading Carroll is the efficiency of very basic
descriptive imagery and the importance having trust in the mind of the reader. Like
any writer I have a tendency to be superfluous, when I edit my stories I spend
most of the time trimming the fat, but I do still like the narrative
to be thick and juicy. I think that's why I was so uncomfortable when
I first began reading Alice, the prose was just so... basic, “The
rabbit was white, it ran, it jumped down a whole, Alice jumped after
it,” (please know that is not a direct quotation.) If it was me,
describing that sequence would have been a few paragraphs, I would
have wanted to make sure the reader was really paying attention and
knew every detail, every sense that the characters was feeling,
because the moment was so important. But Carroll? Pfft, he knows you
can read, the rabbit jumped down the whole, there you go. It's the
most magical image of the nineteenth century, but the magic wasn't written from Carroll's quill, it came from our minds.
He knew it was captivating, and fussing
over the moment would have been a distraction. I think it is a very
modern practice for literature not to trust in the reader's
imagination, but instead to describe every single little detail,
perhaps a trend originating from the television and film industry
surrounding us in imagery all the time, books are often written as
though they have to replicate these in language format, but they
don't, they're stories.
At the same time, I feel that as a
writer I am very descriptive at heart, and it comes from an honest
place, so who knows how this revelation will effect my work. Though I
don't think I will directly make an active decision against it,
understanding a new perspective of artistry is an enriching
experience that I always enjoy.
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