Emotional Responses

When walking with Alice through the croquet ground, the Duchess gave morals to everything said between them. “‘Tis love” the Duchess said that makes the world go round. Alice responded quietly that “somebody” said it’s done by everybody minding their own business. That “somebody” was the Duchess. Now personally, I think there is just a little bit of contradiction in the Duchess’ statements. The first statement given was that people should mind their own business, said when the Duchess was sitting with the pig-baby and having her nose filled with pepper. So why the disparate views? The first time, she was uncomfortable and annoyed. The second time around, she had just escaped beheading through Alice’s decisions, and was probably grateful. Alice’s point of view was a little different.

Alice said her response quietly to the Duchess. I think Alice had added a little bit of venom to her sentence. Why? In order to spite the Duchess for being so rude to her earlier and besides, Alice just did not like her anyway. Alice was also probably annoyed that the Duchess had changed her idea. Alice was respectful and polite in their first conversation, yet was met with threats of death. As this is usually seen as impolite, Alice was displeased and displayed it subversively in their latter meeting. So Alice chose to act polite first because she was happy and humble, but later spoke acerbically because of her anger and annoyance.

I think this strongly states that for many of us our views are directly varied by emotion. What defines maturity then? I think for here it defines itself as the strength of character to not let emotion guide you, but rather your philosophies.

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

MLIA

During the scene in the court, the Mad Hatter is called to the stand to provide his evidence. He begins his statement multiple times. It usually was a variation of “I’m a poor man, your Majesty.” This entertained me greatly. The Hatter illustrated his own madness by his inability to maintain cogent thought, but more funny than that was his repetition of “MLIA”. For the older crowd reading this, MLIA is a website on which people entertain themselves by reading people’s funny stories they post telling that “My Life Is Average”.

After reading this, it occurred to me that Carroll was entertaining his audience just the same in his day as we are entertained today.

That, I think, addresses a common principle of human social dynamics: humor at the situation of others. Humor is a bonding tool we use to forge and galvanize relationships, and we often do so at the expense of others (FML). However, the Hatter’s MLIA is much more like someone’s teacher quietly leaving in the middle of a test to Nerf-Gun the loud students in the hall. In such a case, we are not necessarily derisively laughing at another’s detriment, but are more so laughing as a group at the hilarity of the situation itself. I think that here Carroll, inadvertently or not, exemplified well the power of humor upon each of us.

Childhood Is A Choice

I found something interesting in a sentence of Deron Molen’s in his blog post “Has Childhood Passed Us By”. This is both a response to his post and a posing of my own questions and feelings.

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Deron writes:

“There are moments when children act mature beyond our years and others when they act like a bunch of toddlers.”

Freud would have a field day . You oscillate between 3rd person and 1st person rapidly; from “when children” to “our years” and “they act”. I think this emboldens that you are not a typical “Big Kid” but are rather what humans define as “adult”. You seem to maintain at times that you are still young, but are certainly precocious and not to be taken lightly by anyone of any age, including those older than us.

I think there is a question to be asked among us “kids” about “adults”. Are all adults adult? Apart from being physically older, are all adults really more intelligent, mature, or capable than us? Who decides society’s fashion? Who decides society’s course? Who then, decides the image of idolatry and what we as humans or youth should look like physically, emotionally, mentally, and in maturity?

Lastly, who decides what adults are? Us or them? Me or Him? Kid or Adult?

The Rabbit’s Watch

*Summary: Time is a thing often contemplated and often used for imagery. This is a short analysis of the topic of time in chapter 1 of The Annotated Alice.

Often time is seen as an ungraspable conundrum of diction assembled in a disparate way to symbolize whatever the author is attempting to convey. Pretty much, people are confused a lot by the concept of time, because the writers that address it best often seem to hide their ideas behind big words and odd tangents.

Let me define time: “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole” say the Oxford American Dictionaries. Time’s passing is something we worry about daily. We worry, wondering if we have finished enough work. We worry, wondering if we have slept enough. We worry, wondering if we have eaten enough. We worry, wondering if we have accomplished everything we needed to today, last week, last year, and in all of our life. It always seems that we never feel accomplished when we worry if we did enough.

In The Annotated Alice I find that Carroll toys around with time to suit his storytelling needs, but what other meaning, what adult meaning, can we find enveloped in the text? The Rabbit, bearing his fancy coat and pocketwatch rushes along paying no heed to Alice, worrying if he will be late. Connecting this to us, do we often rush along in life working and worrying? In turn, are we missing out on the beauty and joy to be in found in something so innocent as children, as Alice? As Alice falls down the seemingly never-ending Rabbit Hole, she reacts innocently to her situation, using the fall as an opportunity to think upon expansive tangents. At the same time, she bears no concern for her safety, even though she has fallen for several minutes (and accelerated to an incredible speed). T

hinking in terms of humanity, can we be easily distracted from dreams and the present by fear? Do we lack Alice’s innocence and are we thereby concerned with the end point of the fall instead of enjoying our journey?

Ideas and analysis welcome