Thoughts on The Ending

I don’t like how this story ends.

Alice has just gone through so much in Wonderland. She’s seen and met many amazing creatures that could only exist in her dreams. And that’s that. She saw them she met them. And it was all a dream. Why do authors do that? Why do they take a big exciting fun adventure and turn it into something that could never be. I mean we all know that we will never meet talking animals, or have a conversation with a hookah smoking caterpillar but it’s fun just to imagine it for a while. But no, Carroll comes and crushes our dreams with his own dream that he’s written.

What was the purpose of all that? To make such a fascinating story and then end it so blandly. I haven’t read the book, and didn’t remember the movie, and even expected it to all be a dream. It’s just what seems expected from authors.

And what has Alice taken from all this?

We don’t know. All we see is her get up and run off to go get tea. Did she learn from it? Does she have more dreams like this one? Does she mature from her experiences? This ending is kind of like the one from Lord of the Flies. We don’t even know if the boys got off the island. Does Alice ever actually escape her dreamland? I guess that’s what sequels are for.

A B(e)tter Ending

And the ending has come to a wonderful adventure with Alice.

I never really thought that I would get to know a storybook character better then I know some of my friends. I’ve spent so much time sitting down reading and writing and analyzing, that I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to just go through a book or watch a movie or see something on TV the same anymore. This has been a growing experience, when talking of how I read books and how I write. I’ve learned a lot during these six weeks. Whether it be to look at more then just what you see. Or to make sure that when you want to say “write” you type “write” instead of “right”. All and all I think this will help me become a better reader, and even probably a better writer. Having to sit down and think about what I’m going to say before I’m going to write it has definitely taught me new writing skills.

But instead of being an ending, this could be the beginning of something very good. People find careers in this sort of thing. Web designing, blogging, you name it. Anything we’ve done in the past six weeks could be seen as a interesting future job. I’m not saying this is what I really want to get in to, but it has given me a better view of things. The world, for that matter.

But then again maybe it all was just a dream.

The Alice Stage

We go through many different stages in life. Starting right when we can walk all the way to our midlife crisis. I believe there is a stage in between it all, and I call it the Alice Stage. This was inspired by Mile’s blog, Remember the Time.

This is what I said to it:

You know I’m thinking the same thing. I talked about this in my blog “Alice the Movie”. I don’t really see what I liked about this story. But if I think about it, I was a young innocent child who didn’t even realize all these bad references. It was just a good story and I liked the movie. It had fun colors, and cool animals, and talking creatures. What little kid would not like this? Alice in Wonderland is just part of growing up. It’s like one of those stages we go through. Right after the sucking your thumb stage and just before the liking girls stage is, what I like to call, the Alice in Wonderland Stage, or the imagination stage.

I’d like to elaborate on this.

Everyone goes through this stage, no matter who you are. Some people may still be going through it, others never grow out of it. Somewhere inside us stays what we create during this stage in our lives. This is the part of our lives when we have an imaginary friend. Where we talk about him, to him. This is the stage when we draw the crazy pictures of our crazy things like that in Alice. Where our imagination is at full blast, non-stop, 24/7. This is where our true little kid is, in the Alice Stage. This part of our emotions never leaves us. It’s always there when we need it. Even when your not expecting it to be there it’s still working. You just dust it off and it starts moving again just like it did when you were little. The Alice Stage is our Imagination Stage. Where coloring in the line’s doesn’t matter anymore. In fact it’s what we color outside the lines that everyone looks at. It’s what matters.

The peak of The Alice Stage ranges from long to short in different people. With me I still remember my imaginary friend I had way back when I was five. I could probably resurrect him if I wanted to. That’s what’s so cool about it. It never leaves you. This is when you truly learn how to use that brain of yours, and how to think outside of the box.

The Final Frontier

No, not Star Trek. Sorry you Trekkie’s out there who clicked this Google link. No Spock’s or Klingon’s here.

We are approaching the end of the project and there are still questions being thrown out and about:

• Why was it a dream?
• What was the purpose of all this?
• Was it really just a children’s story?

Well I think I have a theory as to what happened with everything in the story. I’m not sure if it should be published and put into the textbooks but that’s where you come in. Am I right or wrong in this?

I believe that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a coming-of-age story, a story where Alice is growing up.

Lewis Carroll could have written this story, inspired by Alice Liddell and how she was growing up. He put in different characters to represent the people in her life and different events were different things that the animals did. It was all about how Carroll saw Alice L. as she matured. Throughout the entire story when Alice is asked “Who are you?” by a number of the Wonderlands inhabitants, she replies “I don’t know” or some form of that. The story was all about finding herself. The garden could’ve been a metaphor for her growing up and it was it that she was trying to get to the entire time.

Now once again fill free to tell me if I’m wrong. This is just what I think.

I Watch This Movie Too Much

Well, I was watching a little bit of the movie AGAIN and thought well what would my younger siblings think about this? After all I think it’s weird, would they?

Now I think this experiment would work better if my brother and sister were a little bit younger, but I still got the same effect. First I showed them the part when Alice got stuck in the Rabbit’s house and then the part with the hookah smoking caterpillar. Now what I was surprised about was what my brother said about the caterpillar. “Isn’t that sort of a bad influence?” was the first thing he said. Now I didn’t think he would’ve even thought about that but still he did.

What has this world come to?

Our youth know about drugs and peer pressure! He’s not even in middle school yet!

This is a clear example of how society has changed in the past years. Although it was quite a long time ago, I’m sure that when Alice Liddel was first read this story she didn’t think about the drug reference. I don’t think any child would have maybe 15 years ago. But still it bothers me that kids my brothers age are aware of this.

Hello Again Alice (Part 2)

Note: please go to my “Hello Again Alice (Part 1)” to see why I start this way.  Thanks.

***

Asked and answered. I was only joking in the first place. I knew she was dreaming. I mean who didn’t know she was dreaming? If you didn’t then shame on you.

But seriously lets think about this. In your dreams does anything that crazy and exciting ever happen? No I would hope not. Alice went about this dream like it was any other she had already had. So I thought about this and the questions I asked in the first blog. Had Alice already been there and didn’t know it?

I’ve seen in many TV shows and movies where a person visits a place and always says to themselves “I’ve been here before.” Although Alice never says this, it seems that everyone in Wonderland is thinking it. But it could still be that maybe someone in her family has been there before. Like her mom or other sister. We see that this could be true after Alice wakes up. Her sister is the one that actually wakes her up and right after that she falls asleep and has a similar dream. She just sees what Alice went through. But this could still be a possibility.

Children’s Book?

It seems to me that all my ideas come when I’m watching the movie. It kind of gives me a perspective on what all is going on. I don’t always have to rely on my imagination to come up with what people and creatures look at. But while watching the movie I came to a realization. Although this book was easy for me to read, I don’t see how this would be appealing to a child. Too much confusion and a confusing plot and too much going on for even me to understand. I still don’t understand what’s happening at the end! Or what most of these English words are. Which brings up the question, is this REALLY a children’s book? If so what makes it a children’s book? If not why? Is it the language? The (somewhat) adult references?

This blog was also inspired by Alex C.’s blog, where he posed a question, what constitutes as a children’s book? Here is what I said:

When I first thought about your question I thought that if the story teaches a lesson in a cute and funny way then it’s a children’s book. But then again don’t all books? Whether they’re for children or not? And I actually can’t think of a lesson that this book teaches. Except for what the Duchess says. But those aren’t necessarily lessons the book teaches with experience, like Little Red Riding Hood, or the story about the Gingerbread House. But it isn’t hard to separate a children’s book from a novel. Just look at the cover. Sometimes it can tell you a lot.

After thinking about this for a while I realized that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland doesn’t have to be considered a children’s book. There isn’t a MAIN lesson learned. The plot is confusing. The language and references would also be hard for a child to understand.

So why write it? Perhaps I’ll think of it while watching the rest of the movie.

The Third Witness

First I would like to say I really do have no idea what this trial is about. All I understand is that the Jack of Hearts (I think?) stole some candy from the Queen and she got very upset so she is holding a “trial” (trial is a very loose word, considering I don’t really see how the Jack is going to make it out of this one since he has no one on his side). So my first question would be, just to clear me up, “What is going on here?”

Next I find it very curious that Alice is a witness in all this. It’s not interesting to me that she is a witness but that the White Rabbit is the one that calls her to the stand. I went back and checked, and noticed that Alice’s name is not said at all throughout the entire story. Back when the caterpillar asks “Who are you?” she says “I don’t know”. Alice never introduces herself as Alice in the entire story. No one ever says her name. But the White Rabbit says that “Alice!” is the third witness.

Odd. Yes I know this is, sort of, her imagination, but it’s still odd.

So I would like to know: Is there any significance to the White Rabbit being the one to first say her name? What could the White Rabbit Represent here?

Alice the Movie

The other day, before I had finished the book, I was getting curious as to how the story ended, so I whipped out the old VHS player and got the cartoon Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, and started to watch it. I was very anxious to see the movie I watched when I was a kid and see what I thought of it now.

I was actually very surprised at what I was watching.

I hardly understood what was happening.

Later I did learn that most of the movie is from “Through the Looking Glass” but it still seemed mushed together. I was finding it hard to imagine what I liked about this movie as a kid. Maybe it was the adventure and cute little kid stuff but now that I see it today, it’s just creepy. Since Disney made this one kind of…weird…I’m pretty excited to see what Tim Burton has in store for us.

This also made me think what would a little kid would think of the movie now. And if this movie was actually meant for teens and adults rather then children.

Your opinion?

Are These Really Annotations?

I’ve noticed that some of the annotations are just some obvious things that Martin Gardner may have noticed. These “analyses” are things any person could have seen. I’m starting to not really see some of the annotations as good analysis just obvious explanations for some of the happenings in wonderland. After all, it’s already been noted that the Wonderland is an “opposite world” so it’s not that hard to see how some things in this world are playoffs of things in the real world. There are many examples of this.

One is the mock turtle scene in Chapter 9. Martin Gardner takes note in the margin that PERHAPS this could be a playoff of green turtle soup. No duh it’s a spinoff of that! Anyone who knew what green turtle soup was would know that this was the “opposite” of it. (I put “opposite” in quotes because I’m sure there are many different assumptions of what the opposite of green turtle soup could be.) It just seems that some commentary in the margin’s could be avoided somehow.

Another one that I noted as OBVIOUS would be the fact that the Lobster Quadrille dance is a play on Lancers Quadrille. However I do not know how the Lancer’s Quadrille is performed, I still think that if I did know what it was I would laugh and think it funny that there was a dance in the story called the Lobster Quadrille. No need to tell me that again in the margin.

It also seems extraneous to put the original poem that Carroll is making fun at in the margin. I’m pretty sure that everyone as a child has heard the first stanza of The Star by Jane Taylor. By reading the  Mad Hatter’s poem that he sang about the bat, it’s obvious (to me) that it’s making fun at “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. I don’t think I need to go to the margin and read that same thing again.

It may not bother anyone else, but every time I go to read the annotations I’m hoping to read something I didn’t know, or learn something new. Seeing obvious notes taken by another reader of the story doesn’t really make me want to go and read the annotations again.