“Nine in the Afternoon” -Panic (!) At The Disco

(the (!) is there because they started out with it in their name, then later took it out. Random thought.)

“Into a place where thoughts can bloom

Into a room where it’s nine in the afternoon

and we know that it could be,

and we know that it should,

and you know that you feel it too

’cause it’s nine in the afternoon

and your eyes are the size of the moon”

-Nine in the Afternoon by Panic(!) At The Disco

For me, Wonderland is like “a room where it’s nine in the afternoon,” because it’s a place where the impossible is possible. It’s either 9 in the morning or 9 at night in the real world, but in Wonderland, it could very well be 9 in the afternoon. Animals can talk, cards can paint, and hatters have tea parties with hares! This aspect of the story almost reminds me of “The Veldt,” where the children have a room that would become anything that they wanted it to become.

On one of my other blogs, there were a few comments implying that I was being a little harsh on Alice. I do imply insanity an awful lot, but I do also recognize her childish innocence. Children will believe anything, usually without questioning it at first. Though, I was always the little girl who asked how Santa drank so much milk and didn’t stop for a bathroom break, I still believed in Santa. So, maybe I am being a little unfair about all of my accusations. Or, maybe Carroll wanted us to forget about her being a child and start thinking she might be a little bit insane.

Either way, it seems that anything is possible in Wonderland. Alice’s dream world has become more than just a dream. It’s a reality to us all at this point, and for the time being, she could quite possibly be a little bit insane.

“It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay awake when I’m asleep” -Owl City (Fireflies)

In “The Annotated Alice,” on pages 67, there’s a bit about the conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice. To simplify, it states that when one is dreaming, they see and do things that aren’t quite real, and that sanity is really a question of whether or not you can decipher between dreams and reality. Whereas, most people see insanity as a relative of diversity. If you look at the view from “The Annotated Alice,” it’s really quite interesting. Everyone dreams, whether they know it or not, it’s really a matter of whether or not they remember the dream. But, say you do remember a dream, usually nothing is in the “norm,” yet when we wake up, there’s still that feeling of “did that really happen?”.

Alice asks the Cheshire Cat how he knows she’s mad, and he responds “You must be… , or you wouldn’t have come here” (page 66). It could be seen as a bit of foreshadowing, is Alice indeed dreaming? And, is everyone a little mad when they’re dreaming? And if sanity is the ability to tell the difference between a dream and reality, does that make Alice insane? Because, she certainly seems to believe that all of this is real. Rabbits that talk, babies that turn into pigs, and caterpillars that smoke; none of these things are something that a “sane” person would see, or a “realistic” person would even believe to be real.

“I’d like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay
Awake when I’m asleep
‘Cause everything is never as it seems
When I fall asleep”

Just a few lines from the song “Fireflies” by Owl City, but I feel that it really relates to this, (you should really listen to it if you haven’t before, it’s amazing). Dreams are anything we want them to be, and despite the fact that nothing is normal, it feels so real. In Alice’s “Wonderland,” everything is queer, as Alice puts it. Nothing is as it usually is, and yet now she can’t seem to look back at reality. Now that she’s been exposed to this “wonderland,” nothing back at home is going to be normal anymore. No more talking rabbits, no more cats that smile, and no more footmen with fish heads. Reality has now become something very unreal. So, my last question is…does that mean that Alice’s reality has become unreal, and her dream real, or is Alice insane?

“In the Beginning, I tried to warn you. You play with fire, It’s gonna burn you” -Good Charlotte (Victims of Love)

There’s not much use in trying to deny that Alice is naive. She’s a little girl, and a rather ditsy, from what I can gather, but she’s observant…and very curious. She came across a bottle labeled “drink me,” but “the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry,” (page 17). It’s good that she realizes she shouldn’t drink something just because it says to, but the way she goes about checking it is rather rediculous, by today’s standards atleast. She checks to see if it’s labeled poison, which it’s not, but really…not everything that’s poisonous is labeled poison.

If you recall Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, the protagonist was given an apple. No one suspects anything bad to come of an apple, especially from an elderly woman, so she eats it. This apple is not just any apple, though. It stops her heart. Not everything is as it seems, so “the wise little Alice” still isn’t really being safe by checking it for a distinct label. It’s very trusting of her to drink from this strange bottle.

Alice’s logic while she’s debating drinking from the bottle is absolutely absurd if you don’t remember that she’s merely a child. “A red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long, [and] if you cut yout finger very deeply, it usually bleeds,” but everyone who has been burnt knows that it only takes a small touch to burn, and a even the tiniest prick makes you bleed. It amuses me, though, that she learns these things from stories, and yet she ignores these little warnings, and drinks from the bottle anyways, because it’s not marked ‘poison’.

“In the beginning, I tried to warn you

You play with fire, it’s gonna burn you

And here we are now, same situation

You never listen, I never listen”

I chose these lyrics to represent by blog because it really shows what’s going on with Alice. She’s been given so many warnings of why not to trust things like this. A strange bottle, in a strange place, filled with an unknown liquid. As famously said, Curiosity killed the cat….but satisfaction brought it back.

“Mad as Rabbits”: Panic at the Disco

As Alice is falling down the rabbit hole, we learn a lot about her personality.

In The Annotated Alice, it tells us that the real Alice had short brown hair and brown eyes. Now, it’s kind of funny that in the movie Alice in Wonderland, that they would change her appearance. It would have been easy to keep her same appearance because it was an animated movie, so there must have been some kind of reasoning behind her being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed young girl. You may be thinking that I’m implying she’s German, but I’m not. Based upon just common stereotype, blonde hair kind of represents a certain ditziness, and the colour blue in general has a sort of curiosity to it. Her appearance says a lot about her personality alone. There’s no arguing the fact that Alice was “burning with curiosity” (page 12).

I noticed that Alice never really seems to care what shall happen to herself, but more of what is going to happen to other people. Whilst she’s falling down what seems to be an abyss at the time, she has not a care in the world other than what other people will think of her. Not once does she mention being worried about dying, but more so worried about killing someone else if she drops an empty jar of orange marmalade.

I find this rather peculiar. Most children her age would be scared to death of falling in a dark hole and not being able to see the bottom. Not Alice, though. She’s more concerned about if anyone will remember to feed her cat Dinah.

If it were an adult in this situation, they would probably have denied the whole situation entirely. An adult would have sent his/herself to be examined if they’d seen a rabbit running around, talking, and wearing clothes.

Alice, on the other hand, does not see anything abnormal about this until the rabbit pulls a pocket watch out of his coat! It makes a person wonder a little about her mental sanity, but we have to remember that she’s a child. Alice is a curious little girl who had not a worry in the world but to find out what a rabbit in clothes was going to be late for.