"White Rabbit"

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your Head
Feed your Head!"

Copyright © Grace Slick

OK, lets get this out of the way quickly: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and LSD.

Of course LSD was not around when the book was written, so it is complete nonsense to state the book is about LSD. So where did that idea come from?

People who assert that nobody NOT on drugs could have come up with such a story are suggesting that people cannot exercise imagination. That's just silly. Of course nearly ALL of us can. If you've every made up a story for a child; if you've ever talked to a pet (you don't have to admit to it, but you know who you are); if you were ever a child (that should apply to just about everyone) with an imagination, you have/had the capacity to make up fantasy stories. Carroll was good at it, and if you study the biography, you will find the roots of many of the elements in his fantasy novels. Why then, do so many want to assume the author was taking drugs, and what is the origin of the ALICE/drugs connection (exploited later in a book called Go Ask Alice, which many of you will have read)?

The LSD connection comes from an album (remember albums?) called Surrealistic Pillow (one of my faves, by the way) by the Jefferson Airplane. One song, "White Rabbit," compared an acid trip to Alice's journey through Wonderland. Since the group, at the time, was part of the Ken Kesey, Grateful Dead "acid trip" scene in San Francisco, they may well have understood time/space shifting, surreal conversations with inanimate objects and animals, distortion (growing/shrinking) and the like. But Grace Slick and the rest were/are neither literary critics nor credible biographers; it was just an idea; it was not a fact or even a real claim backed by any evidence.

Most of the authoritative biographers show no history of drug use by Lewis Carroll, and when you consider most of his work was in very controlled subjects (such as calculus), it was incredibly unlikely that the Oxford don was a druggie.

So, please, no drug interpretations for the question below.

Answer one of the questions below.

  1. Alice in Wonderland and its companion, Through the Looking Glass, are considered by many to be the greatest children's book of all time. Volumes have been written praising (and villifying) and analyzing the books.

    What is this book all about? What does it mean? What does it suggest about the nature of fantasy? You'll want to cite specific incidents, even specific lines, from the book to back up your analysis.

    Obviously, there are many logical ways to interpret the book; focus on just one. There's no one right answer. All that I ask is that you back up your interpretation with details from the book which show a consistent pattern.

    To give you some ideas, here are a couple of possible approaches; you are not limited to these:

    • Examine Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a story symbolizing a young girl's search for identity. Consider the position of a child in society, the rules and behaviour she is required to submit to. Discuss her attempts to make sense of the social situations, the "mad" actions and language she encounters. Also look at her constantly being challenged and eventually asserting herself in the end. Be sure to include documented quotations from the novel to illustrate and support your ideas.

    • Much of the success of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is due to the works extensive wordplay. Show how this fantasy (or its sequal, if you've read it) uses linguistic games, revisions of popular sayings and poems, philosophical notions and social conventions reduced to absurdity, for much of its humor and satire. As always, quote and document actual passages to illustrate your points.

  2. The Alice books and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz are examples of social satire. There are digs at many areas of society (politics, aristocracy, education, customs, etc.) in the books. Discuss this idea citing several elements being satirized in either Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  3. This builds on topic 2. above. What differences between English and American apporaches to fantasy are suggested in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. For example, both books have little girls as protagonists, but these are very different little girls. Both stories end up with returns to the "usual," but the themes/ideas suggested by the two endings are very different. Again, be sure to include documented quotations from the works in your answer.