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Thanks to that Children's Lit class...I actually got around to reading 'Alice in Wonderland' with a more mature mindset...
What can I say? It captivated me...did it come as any surprise...?
Alice in Wonderland
I just finished this book on the way home from school today on the bus. The version I read had both 'Alice in Wonderland' and the second part, 'Through the Looking Glass.' I can't really say that I enjoyed 'Through the Looking Glass' too much...quite honestly, it was pretty weird and SERIOUSLY nuts even for me...but there WERE a few lines that I came across that stuck out. They stuck out primarily because I've run into them before time and time again and had always wondered where they originated from.
Here's one from the Looking Glass:
'The time has come.' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax-
Of cabbages -and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings.'
Honestly...that's brilliant. Now, I'm SURE that out of the three, MAYBE four people that will actually read this...that probably none of you will get it. None of you will understand why I'm so...enamored of that little couplet, why I find it so entrancing. To be honest, I really don't expect you to. As King had one of his characters say, 'They're just methinks.'
There's another great section in 'Through the Looking Glass' when Alice runs into the Unicorn. The Unicorn remarks that up until that moment, it had always thought 'children' to be fantastical monsters and commanded Alice to talk so that it might be sure that she wasn't a monster.
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: "Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!"
"Well, now that we have seen each other," said the Unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?"
I can't explain how much that section gets to me. It's just...amazing. I'm in love with it. It's just...awesome. Reading the first book, it's like...taking a scalpel and dissecting madness. The animated Disney movie doesn't even hold a candle to the sheer craziness of the book. The movie made things just seem sort of ridiculous and randomly out of place. Reading the book...I SWEAR that there's some sort of pattern running through it...if I could only figure out what it was.
So many things were downplayed in the movie...her encounter with the Chesire Cat for instance...the movie portrayed the cat as a being that was just lounging around for fun and bugging Alice just because she was there. His conversations didn't make much sense and what he DID say was downplayed but what he was DOING at the same time. In the book, I swear, the cat is just FULL of zen-like, philosophical, metaphysical bullshit that goes everywhere and nowhere at once. He uses an argument that sort of...I dunno, it made me shiver in it's implications.
And holy hell...the Mad Hatter's teaparty...that was just INSANE. Honestly, the movie doesn't even come close to how plain crazy the book got. The trial that Alice attended was such a massively uncoordinated mass of just sheer hell that it boggled me...ME. I only act crazy...anyone who's actually fooled by it obviously doesn't know me too well but just by acting, you get SOME sort of idea of how something works and up until now, I thought I had an okay grasp of craziness.
Then I read the book and all that went out the window.
There's this gorgeous convoluted, contradictory passage where Alice remarks to the Duchess that some things don't look exactly like what they ARE. This is the response she got:
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is-'Be what you would seem to be'-or, if you'd like to put it more simply-'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
Now honestly, I ask of you...what the bloody FUCK is that supposed to mean? O.O
It's just great...nevermind that I had to read it four times just to understand it...it's still great.
That's not to say that it's ALL purely crazy...there was this beautiful passage where Alice is sitting down and describing snow as it hits the window:
"Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'"
Like...sorry but my God, that's beautiful...
I'm sorry...I know that none of this makes sense anymore...or even at the beginning for that matter...but I've become obsessed with this book and felt the need to write SOMETHING about it. I guess that's it for now...I've rambled enough...so I'll end with a brief poem that Lewis Carroll ended his book with:
A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July-
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear-
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream-
lingering in the golden gleam-
Life, what is it but a dream?
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