Lying Serpents

The Pigeon cries at Alice that she is a serpent. Alice had just eaten the mushroom pieces until her neck grew high like a giraffe’s. Having laid her eggs three weeks before, the birdbrained Pigeon had not slept from being on the watch for snakes. She has built nests everywhere, but snakes have still eaten her eggs. Now that she has hidden her eggs up in the trees, like a normal bird, she is not particularly happy to see the long-necked Alice. Alice is indignant at being called a serpent and their argument ensues.

At the end of their spat, the Pigeon does not believe Alice is a little girl, but does not much care. In her mind, anything that eats eggs is a serpent. Carroll makes a point here that as humans we can do the same activities as animals but condemn them as bestial. Why is it that we are hypocritical? When confronted we often choose to simply soothe our conscience or by creating reasons for our innocence like “its cooked” and “I used utensils”.

Now I’m not saying I am a vegetarian, because I enjoy a smoked brisket the same as most Texans. My question is, should we not be wholly, and if necessary, brutally honest with ourselves about everything?

Off With Her Head: A Queen’s Journey Through Puns

The Queen is a character that enjoys screaming her head off, or rather the heads of others. Her self-esteem seems to come from her capability to stand a head taller than others as a queen. That is how she entertains herself and how she seems to shave every problem away. In short, beheading seems to be where her head is at. When she approached the garden with her head held high, the gardeners bowed until their heads were at her feet. When she got headwind that they were painting the roses, decapitation was her choppy answer. Alice kept her chin up to the heady noise of the Queen, causing the queen to rage and cut to her usual solution.

Now, still being serious but without the puns, I’ll dig deeper.

The Queen clearly is uncreative and is happy with that. She chooses anger as her first response to anything she sees or hears. So in terms of us, all humans, why do we become angry? I think mood is a choice we make depending on our physical and mental condition, as well as our conditioning of the same. Specifically, we are more apt to become angry if we are tired and hungry. If we are tired and hungry often, eventually a habit of a short-temper can form. There are other influences too such as family or school. The family has a great effect on young children (and a smaller one on teens, who probably will not admit it) in how they think and how they choose to feel or react. Social and academic life at school has a great effect on how people decide to shape themselves. We all pick models at some point to work around. Even nonconformists are conforming to a nonconforming model of some kind. Models and people influence others and some concept wash together in the mind.

People become people

VoiceThread of Ch1 Pictures

This is our first VoiceThread of The Annotated Alice. We commented on the three illustrations by John Tenniel in Chapter 1. Feel free to view/listen to our comments or even add your own.

http://voicethread.com/share/707747/