John de Piper: comment on Alice

John De Piper

I feel that "Alice in Wonderland" resists interpretation because the story itself is about constant re-interpretation, or more specifically about a young child trying to find her way within the strict conventions of society. The book concerns a prepubescent girl, too young for coming of age, who is dealing with the lack of reason in her "real" world through the narrative of a dream. It is no coincidence that all of the characters are either animals or caricatures of real people (i.e. The Duchess) and that they speak, often through pun, in absurdities. To a child who is used to viewing the world through fantasy and make believe, the conventions of society and adulthood are absurd. Thus the lessons that she constantly tries to repeat have less and less meaning because they are in fact meaningless (this is yet a different pun on the word lesson than the one used by the Mock Turtle). This idea is in fact best summed up in her conversation with the Mock Turtle and the Griffon. The concepts of Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision make about as much sense to a young child as their real life counterparts. Although they do have valuable applications for some, to a child they are only significant because society had deemed them so. How many times as youngsters did we all say, "why are we leaning this? We'll never use it in the real world." In this manner, Carroll is chiding the conventions and abstractions of "modern" society through the eyes of a young girl to which they have no "real" meaning. He formalizes this sentiment in the last paragraph where Alice's sister imagines her in the future maintaining the "simple loving heart of her childhood," as if this is commonly lost through the constant re-interpretaions of young adulthood.
And yet, by saying that the story resists interpretation, as mentioned in previous comments, I am in fact interpreting...

-jd