Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are two books I had never read. I like classic literature, of all genres it is my favorite although I don’t fully know why. I enjoy finding the profound lessons that are usually included in the classics, as well as the writing style. Reading many of those works requires a lot of thinking and pondering. But perhaps the thing I love most is that what they found to be important, even though most of these authors are now gone, is what we still find important today.

Lewis Carroll’s Books

I didn’t know what to expect from Lewis Carroll’s famous books. I had seen the Disney movie several times, and the Cheshire Cat is well known to everyone, I suppose because of the animated movie. There were a few moments in the books that I really enjoyed, and I was glad I finally read them. But overall, I was actually a little disappointed.

They were written for children, and from what I have read, Carroll started on these stories by telling them to the daughters of a colleague while rowing around a pond or something. So they are actually oral tradition in inception and written later.

My expectations were probably too high.

My opinion is completely unfair to Carroll, who made no promises to anyone other than that his stories were fanciful. I was expecting more of a deep philosophical journey in the guise of a children’s book. There are definitely some things to think about, but the author made very little of any of it.

For a light and whimsical journey that requires only a small mental investment, read Alice as well as the Looking Glass. There are some very clear lessons, but also some missed opportunities. I think a little more meaning behind the rest of the story would have added a lot to my experience.

What I liked Most

Above all else, I liked Alice. Her character to me rang true. This was a little girl who (in her alleged dream…or reality…whichever) could do a lot, but was also completely fallible. She really didn’t know anything about the topsy-turvy world she had fallen into. Becasue of that, she made a lot of mistakes. She especially offended creatures that her pet cat would enjoy eating.

My favorite thought about Alice was this:

“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”

And that could be said more than likely for all of us as well. That thought alone made Alice human to me right from the start.

I like quotes (you can find some of my favorites as you browse through my website), and there are a few in the Alice books that I enjoyed. Her exchange with the Cheshire Cat is one of the most famous, but I’ll save that for the end.

In Through the Looking Glass, she converses with a gnat for a while, and I liked this thought while they discuss the fate of a bread-and-butterfly being unable to find its preferred food (weak tea with cream). Alice wonders what would happen if it couldn’t find its food.

“Then it would die, of course,” said the Gnat.

“But that must happen very often.”

“It always happens.”

Acknowledging the inevitability of death is important to all of us. That kind of honesty with ourselves helps us maintain a perspective on life that grounds us. It’s important to make our life meaningful, and to be happy while we are alive. Recognizing that life ends is helpful in doing that.

Are We Real?

Are we real? This is a thought that I really love. My book Thread and Other Stories is essentially centered around this question. My personal opinion is that we are real, life is real, the physical world is real, and what we do matters. But there is actually no way for me to prove that to you (not scientifically, that is).

At the end of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll describes Alice in this way:

“So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.”

Metaphysically speaking (if you were extremely pedantic and just a little boring) you might ask Alice how she knows which of the two worlds is reality? Is it real when she’s awake, or asleep? Alice would probably just go back to sleep again, since she was only seven years old. But we might take some time and think about the answer, and even how you might arrive at the answer.

Carroll asks a follow-up question at the end of the Looking Glass:

“Life, what is it but a dream?”

If you are not sure how to begin this mind-bending internal debate, consider that everything you experience is only understood by you via electrical impulses in your mind. So, could your mind be completely isolated from everything (including a physical body)?

And if so, could your mind be given a set of impulses that would simulate everything you believe you experience in the physical world? And if so, how would you know the difference between that and what you experience as a physical being on earth?

These were certainly questions considered in Carroll’s era by intellectuals in the British universities.

The Cheshire Cat

I think the cat, intentionally or not, asks the most practical of all questions to Alice. As a reader, or as a parent trying to find a lesson for a child who has just read these books, the Cheshire Cat offers the most useful moral.

 At a certain point, Alice is a little lost and befuddled. She is searching for the White Rabbit and asks the enigmatic but smiling cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where…,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

This is the closest that Carroll comes to a moral in the story. But I think it is an important one. I’m not the first to ever talk about this particular passage, but it is important for us to have a destination in mind in life.

There are many people who have busy, hectic lives, but I’m not certain if all of them know or care where they want to go. Having purpose, having goals, and having a clear direction means a lot in terms of peace of mind, happiness, and satisfaction in life. This is true whether your physical body exists or not.

And without those things, you never know where you might end up.

 

 

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