Alice Revisited

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass may seem like a manic trip of a children's tale on first glance. Our book club tackled this tale as an earlier read, and I joking pulled some lessons out to share at that time. Still, I was surprised to see an image and a quote from Through the Looking Glass in recent business meeting.

In "Through the Looking Glass" Alice and the Queen are running faster and faster without seeming to go anywhere. Exhausted from this, Alice says "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." The Queen replies, "Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

So what is the lesson I am to take from this? If the business thinks this is important enough to show in a planning presentation, I have to show my boss and my management that I am running twice as fast for the good of the business. As the economy recovers, we must not appear to stand still as other companies may surpass us.

Alice in Wonderland

We are all familiar with the little girl Alice who fell down a rabbit's hole and found herself in a bizarre world of backwardness. As a child, the Walt Disney version of this tale made me very uncomfortable; it had no plot line that I could see and it's lack of structure made me bristle. Then, loving Johnny Depp the way I do, I rented Tim Burton's version of the film and loved it. Here was something I could get behind: not only was there a plot, but Burton et al presented a story of a young woman's journey toward muchness, a substance many young women these days lack.

So I suggested to the Club that we read the story by Lewis Carroll, knowing that most of our generation probably hasn't. As I read I was sorry I had suggested it, mostly.

The story itself has much more in common with the Disney film than I was anticipating. Strange world, when Disney gets most of it right, eh? There was almost no plot, save for a thinly written bit about trying to become a queen. Most of what happened was absolute and pure nonsense, which is fine when it leads to a conclusion, but I don't feel this did. The entire book seemed to me like an infuriating riddle with no answer to be had.

The parts I enjoyed the most were bits and pieces that Burton et al pulled out to put the more recent film together. At one point, Alice is heard to tell a Queen that "one can't believe impossible things." To which the Queen replies: "I daresay you haven't had much practice,...sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." This is a lovely habit of childhood that so many grow out of as they progress, yet still missing their opportunity to develop their muchness. This theme is used by Burten et al to develop a sense of aimlessness in their Alice, and built a back story involving her dead father (aren't there always dead parents? Isn't that how storybook children find appeal on the shelves?).

The story Burton et al build around principally concerns the Jabberwok poem. The book is full of songs and poems and riddles, many of which the reader would recognize from the Disney film. Burton et al pieced together a totally new Alice story, one that makes sense, is empowering, is visually appealing, and still manages to preserve Carroll's general ideas. My conclusion: read the story, it is easy enough and you might love it. However, given the choice, I'd rather Tim Burton had written it.