Good morning all seminarites.
I am sitting here on the morning after our class thinking about your many thoughtful responses. Among those I'd like to flesh out on Tuesday, along with new ideas, are: resilience of children; representation of ages and stages; similarities and differences between the tales; challenges to innocence; spirituality in the tales; issues of trust; ethics; representations of adults in the tales; adult v. child reader; representations of class; handling of cruelty; connection between disobedience and understanding/development; belief in overcoming obstacles; importance of forgiving; pacing and structure; empowering the child; how the tales are read now v. at different historical times/contexts; "the child--which child?"
Looking forward, RN
Through the Looking Glass----
ReplyDeleteAlice went to a reversed dimension, when she entered the mirror in her living room. The story is very imaginative, and teaches children many things, such as that you cannot take life too seriously, and when in doubt, talk to flowers : )
I do not think that Alice specifically found something in this reevrsed world. Pretty much nothing made sense. So, how can you really learn from something which does not make sense?
I think that what she really found was one big adventure story, that she will be able to tell after she comes back into reality. I believe this because Carroll's opinion about life was that underneath structure there is chaos, which is excatly what happened to Alice. She lived during the Victorian period which was very proper, every person had different rules which applied to them. For example, children had different rules than adults, and poor peopel had different rules than the upper class.
Alice left her structural world, and went into a world of chaos. It si interesting though, that although the audience reading this book find it funny, Alice mostly find frusteration. Carroll may be mocking how peopel lived at that time, in order to amuse children as well as his child self.
Adventures in Wonderland vs. Looking Glass---
ReplyDeleteIn "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," the cheshire cat keeps appearing and disappearing when it feels like. It is almost like a godly creature, where it can do whatever it pleases. I think that"Through the Looking Glass," there is also a theme of cats.
For example, the beginning fo the story starts with Alice talking to her black and white kittens. She has conversations with them, as if they are peopel and understand her.She taks to the white kitten about Dinah. She says, "Really, Dinah ought to have better manners' (p.3)
However, unlike in "alic'es Adventures in Wonderland," she does not mention cat. Not even once. The only time that a cat appears in the story again is when she shakes teh queen, and then it turns out to be her cat. With that, she is back into real life.
Both cats are compared to the white queen and red queen. it seems as if Carroll might be suggesting that just as Alice was in her dream world, so were her cats. But we don't know, it is just an assumption. However, in both stories we see the significance of cats, which seems to eb an ongoing theme in carroll's books.