For those of you who have seen Disney's "Alice in Wonderland", you get a pretty good representation, give or take a few things, of what Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is about. Yeah, it's extremely weird, but a great piece of literature. Alice, the protagonist, has dreaming down to an art. Have you ever had a dream where (after studying a bunch of subjects before bed, for example) all the subject matter is jumbled into one massive problem that you just can't solve, and you freak out and think you're going to fail? Well, that's this book in a nut shell. Literally, eveything she has learned becomes mixed up, like the recitations or history, and nothing makes logical sense. Yet, everything seems so real!
The imagery in this book was phenomenal. Everything, as silly as it may seem, was described so well that I honestly got 'lost' in the book, more so than in any poem or other novel I read. I remember at one point, when I was reading about the Mad Hatter's tea party etc, I actually became slightly dizzy picturing everything. (Stupid, I know.) And as far as the reader knows, Alice is actually living in this crazy world with disapeering cats and smoking catipillars, until the end of the novel when she wakes up. The book finishes with her sister wondering what will happen with Alice when she goes through the looking glass, the second book about Alice.
In a way, this book sends a good message to people who don't think outside of the box a lot. Alice is a very sensible person in a world that makes no sense whatsoever, but when she comes out of Wonderland, she has a new perspective on things (so it can be inferred with what little she says after her awakening). Therefore, maybe we should "take a trip to Wonderland" in (day)dreams in order to get a reality check.
The actual meaning behind the book, however, is more of a protest than an inspiration. "Carroll" was a mathematician at an Oxford Catholic college. He wrote this book protesting imaginary numbers, symbolic algebra, and many other radical changes in the mthematic world at the time. Makes sense, right? Here's the website if you want to read more.
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_10.html
I haven't read the book and I haven't seen the Disney version of the movie, but might I just say that the Tim Burton version was TRIPPY. Also, I am astounded that someone could come up with such a genius piece of work for the sole purpose of protesting numbers. That's amazing! I want to read this book now, regardless of how similar it may be to the movie.
ReplyDeleteI felt the exact same way when I read those books! When Alice was falling down the rabbit hole, I felt like I was falling as well, just getting quick glances at all the things she was passing just as she was, not able to focus in on any one thing before it’s gone. The whole book was like that, I actually felt just as confused as Alice did, but not in a bad way. The book was so well written as to make the reader feel as if he/she were actually in Wonderland with Alice, just as bewildered by all the mixed up things she encountered. In this way it was a bit hard to follow, but I didn’t want to stop and go back because I wanted to keep reading it was so intriguing. But I’ve wanted to go back and read the books again because the two stories keep merging together in my mind (sort of like with Alice) and I can’t remember what happened in which book. I wish I had the time! Also, I’m sure I missed a tonne of symbolism and allusions the first time – it was so well put together and detailed. I loved your analogy to the dream of all the different subjects – that has happened to me countless times, and I never really thought of it like that but now it makes perfect sense and describes the book so well! I also didn’t know about Carroll’s opinions in mathematics, that’s really interesting, that he could have been so conservative and traditionalist in maths yet create such a wildly fantastic imaginary world. I guess what he was trying to show was how absurd the new direction maths was taking seemed to him. Now I really want to reread the book for the maths references!
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