Connections Between Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the University of Texas

09.28.2004

1. Alice’s journey to Wonderland in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as her journey through the mirror in Through the Looking Glass can be compared to our journey to college. Just as Alice did, we “fell very slowly, [with] pleny to time […] to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next” (13). The move to college was anticipated all summer, so we had time to think about what the experience was going to be like; we also had plenty of time to worry. For Alice, it was “too dark to see anything” (13) when she looked down the hole into which she was falling, in the same way that we could only form vague ideas about what our college life would be like. When the experience finally did begin, it was like Alice stepping through the looking glass, which began “to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist” (143). Finally, we were able to experience the actual thing, rather than just thinking or talking about it. Thus, Alice’s journeys into Wonderland parallel the freshman’s journey into the Wonderland of college, encompassing uncertainty, excitement, and worry.

2. The various bottles and food items that Alice comes across in Wonderland parallel the temptations of unhealthy foods and alcoholic beverages a freshman faces at the University of Texas. Like the “wise little Alice” (17) we tell ourselves that we will not gain the freshman-fifteen and that we will not succumb to the temptations of alcohol at parties. But also like Alice, our curiosity and greed will get the better of us sooner or later. I have seen this, for example, in my own roommate, who has started getting drunk even during the school week; I am, fortunately, still holding out. Like Alice, my roommate, like many other freshman, has decided that the “bottle was not parked ‘poison’” (17). These “DRINK ME” bottles make the experience in our Wonderland even stranger and more dangerous.

3. Through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll parodies and imitates various poems and songs by putting them in Alice’s mouth. She is asked in several cases to recite well-known nursery rhymes and such things, but “the words [do] not come the same as they used to do” (23). This same phenomenon is reflected in the way freshman ideas, worldviews, and values change when they come to college. This can be seen, for example, in those who were once good students but who are so distracted by the Wonderland of college that they neglect their studies. Other sorts of values are also lost or altered. For instance, one of my best friends is Jewish, and this has been the first year that she has not fasted for Yom Kippur, both because she did not want to be left out of her friends’ activities on the weekend, and because she decided not fasting would not make her a “bad” Jew. So, like Alice, freshman are not able to recite their nursery rhymes as they knew them before, either because their new experiences have confused them, or because they have learned new ones to replace the old. Many of the values our parents have instilled in us will be or already have been challenged at college.

4. When Alice grows inside the Rabbit’s house until her limbs finally break through the windows and doors, I was reminded of the feeling of a college dorm room. Even if these rooms weren’t shared with a roommate, they would be small. Many freshman move in with too much “stuff”, because they could not bear to leave anything behind, only to find that there is not enough space to store everything. Furthermore, the roommate might always play loud music, have strange boys over, and get drunk in the room. Thus, the space inevitably becomes too small. Alice asks herself, “How can you learn lessons in this room? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson books!” (40). Many college students experience this same frustration, and thus break out of their rooms, as Alice breaks out of the Rabbit’s house, and find other places to study and sometimes even to sleep.

5. When Alice knocks on the door in front of which the Fish-Footman sits, he tells her there is no sense in her knocking because he is “on the same side of the door” and because “they’re making such a noise inside, no one could possible hear you” (58). This reminded me of the struggle many freshman encounter while attempting to fit in and find a group to belong to in college. My boyfriend and I often feel like this, because we are always trying to find people to hang out with. We call almost everyone we can think of, but everyone is always busy or, worst of all, spending Saturday night doing homework. We thus feel as if we are both on the same side of a door, knocking like Alice, but no one will let us in, and, as the Footman points out to Alice, it is silly to expect to be able to let each other in.

6. The climax of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the trial. In the “court of justice” Alice sees the “judge” wit his “great wig”, as well as “those twelve creatures” that make up the jury (111). This collection of creatures and events is stranger than a normal court, but nevertheless an accurate and poignant parody. The harsh judgments of the Queen, as well as the disorganization and craziness of the jury, reminded me of two things. In one way, this court is like the professors at college: most are eccentric, some are entirely unapproachable, some seem as if they have no idea what is going on, and others grade harshly and without mercy. On the other hand, the harshest of judgments comes from our peers: one of my friends has already had the experience of someone calling him up and angrily yelling at him for something that he felt he was justified in yelling about. Sometimes I feel all of these judgmental people are shouting “Off with her head!” (124) at me and everyone else, just as the Queen shouts at Alice.

7. Arguably the most well known part of Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is the nonsense poem Jabberwocky. This poem is much like the material learned in difficult college classes. At first, Alice cannot even identify the poem as being made of words, because she sees only the mirror image. She discovers that by holding the poem up to the mirror, “the words will all go the right way again” (148). But even after this change, Alice cannot understand the meaning of the poem. “It seems very pretty,” she comments, “but it’s rather hard to understand” (150). This is paralleled in the reading freshman have to do in college, especially if they are not conditioned to read as much at a time or of the difficulty as they are now expected to. I was also reminded of complex math equations: if you don’t look too closely, they look like gibberish just as much of the words of the jabberwocky do. However, all of these lessons can eventually be understood by freshmen, in the same way that Alice (and the reader) can better understand the Jabberwocky when Humpty Dumpty begins to define words.

8. Whenever a chess piece moves in Through the Looking Glass, which is conceived as if on a chessboard, they move so fast from one space to another that, from Alice’s point of view, that they simply disappear. When the Red Queen leaves Alice the first time, for example, Alice cannot guess whether “she vanished into the air, or whether she ran quickly into the wood” (167). Besides being obviously related to the fast pace and excitement of college life, it can also be seen as a parallel to the many acquaintances freshman make and lose within just a few short weeks after they being college. Just as Alice meets all sorts of people in Wonderland and on the other side of the mirror, freshman meet more people in a few days than they can remember the names of. Some people who I met at the beginning of the year I expected to become friends with. However, they have already disappeared like the Red Queen. Perhaps this is why it is so hard to find a group of friends in college: you meet too many people, like Alice does, and then they disappear again before you have even really finished the conversation.

9. At one point in Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in a shop with an old knitting sheep. She looks at all the “curious things” in the shop, but “whenever she [looks] hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it [has] on it, that particular shelf [is] always quite empty, though the others round it [are] crowded” (201). This can be related to two things. First of all, it reminds me of how my days can always seem to full and even stressful, but still I sometimes find myself being bored and lonely, like the shelf Alice is currently looking at. At the same time, the things that Alice wants to see being just out of reach can also be paralleled to the idea that our dreams and hopes are also just out reach. Coming to college, I believe most of us thought we would have an opportunity to become more the person we want to be. But, like the items Alice tries to see, this is never quite possible, and we will always fall just short of what we wish we were.

10. The fragility of Humpty Dumpty is not unlike the fragility of freshman at a university. As Gardner points out is his Annotated Alice, the story of Humpty Dumpty reveals “the pride that goeth before his fall” (209). Like the personified egg, we come to college believing we are invincible, that we have a whole world of opportunity open to us, and that nothing will ever go wrong again. This is, inevitably, proven to be false. We easily disregard our parents’ warnings and advice, jumping headfirst into various aspects of the college experience. We are, however, more fragile than we think. Our grades are not as good as we had hoped or expected, it is not as easy to make friends as we had imagined, and we are quickly overwhelmed by the challenged and temptations of college life. Like Humpty Dumpty, most of us will eventually fall from this wall of optimism and stubborn pride with “a heavy crash [that shakes] the forest from end to end” (220).

11. The various useless inventions of the White Knight reminded me of a seemingly useless class that some of my engineering friends are taking. It is a class that is based on connections between games and science. Their last assignment, for example, was to write a paper in which they used an already existing toy or game to design a solution or way to solve a biomedical engineering problem. Most of them thought the assignment to be useless, in the same way that Alice points out to the Knight that his upside-down box will not work because “the lid’s open” so “things can get out” (236). However, the assignment also challenged all of them to think in innovative ways, rather than simply regurgitating things they already knew. Although all of the Knight’s inventions could not practically work or were not even physically created, thinking of them both amuse and challenge him. His inventions, like the BME assignment, are like brain exercises. As the Knight says, “I don’t believe that pudding ever will be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent” (242).

12. When Alice finally crosses the last brook into the eighth square of the chessboard, she becomes Queen Alice. This can be paralleled to the crossing of the high school senior over the last exams and the last summer into the Wonderland of college. As a college student, these new freshman see themselves as having a higher status than they had before, just as Alice does. However, these freshman soon discover that they are the babies once again: they do not know their way around campus, they suddenly have to live with someone they perhaps did not know before, their sometimes misuse their newfound freedom, they are more nervous about classes than they have been in years, and they are forced to find new friends and face new challenged and temptations. Thus, their new “power” as college students is a short-lived illusion. This is the same for Alice, who quickly discovers that she has no more freedom or authority as a Queen than she did before. Almost immediately, the Red Queen snaps at her, “Speak when you’re spoken to!” (251). Alice, like college freshmen, is put back into her place and has her delusions of grandeur smashed.