My Wonderland

I know that if I were in Alice’s situation I would have handled things much differently.

First of all, I would have never taken a drink from the “drink me bottle”  because, even though it does not say poison I would no be so naive to believe that just because something does not say poison that does mean that it is not poison. The fact that she does drink the bottle tells me that Alice lives in an Ideal, protected society unlike the one the one we live in today. So, I was saying I would have be logical (as Alice tried to be) but, in a different way.

However, I think my journey through Wonderland would be very brief and unexciting because, I don’t think I would make it past the first hallway. Actually, I don’t think I would find myslef in that wonderland in the first place because I try not to think about the type of things that Alice would have to be thinking about when she is in wonderland. My wonderland would more than likely be underwater and my rabbit would be a talking fish. I think this seems logical because I love water, I think Alice’s wonderland had to do with the fact that she liked little animals and, she liked to play games, resulting in the talking cards. Sadly, we will never know if this is true but, it is fun to think about. However, there is more to the story than just reaction and setting, there is also the lessens we learn while we are there.

I live in a world that is much different than Alice’s and, I am older than Alice so, I believe that the lessens learned would be different as well. I also think that it would be a lot scarier than Alice’s Wonderland because I am older and do not get scared very eassaly and fear is a big part in this story. Back to lessens, I am not sure what lessons I would learn but I think that they would be about love, live, and happyness. As much as I would like to believe that my jerney through wonedr land would be different than Alice’s, I can not say if this is true or not. Wonderland is a very mysterious, deep place that can be seen from many different points of view and, I think your point of view would really determine how your jerney would pan out.

I am now achious to lose myself in Wonderland so, I am off to go on a jerney of my own.

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Mad as a Hatter

A personal favorite character of mine is the Mad Hatter.

As in my entry about the caterpillar, I do not want to express opinion about the Mad Hatter, I only wish to explain some of the ways he could be viewed.

The most common interpritation of him is that he is used to teach Alice about the strange, crazy things we have to deal with in life. This was my first opinion and I believe that it is valid. When Alice meets him, she is forced to deal with him and is not given any other choices, therefore teaching her that sometines you have to do things you don’t want to. This idea is based on the idea that Wonderland is a stand in for the real world but,  if you don’t think that, there are several other ways you could see the Mad Hatter. One good example would be, the Mad  Hatter represents society and its many elements.

I see two ways to support this argument. The first, when he tells Alice that every one is mad. This could be seen as an omnicient phrase, saying that he is all-knowing of all people. The second is his famous riddle, “Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk.” This could be linked to how we try to impress people in conversation, but in reality we have no idea what we are saying. The Mad Hatter is a wonderfully deep character, and his lessons are terribly important to the story.

Who are You?

The caterpillar is one of the strangest characters in Wonderland and one of the most attracted characters as well. I do not wish to express my opinion through this , I only wish to show two of the many ways that you can look at this character. Most people’s first opinion of the caterpillar is that he is a drug reference. This  is a logical opinion because the author makes several indications that this is true. He also does smoke a hookah,(which is what really tips most people off) and he does act like he is on drugs. Another thing that could be linked to drugs is the fact that he lives on a mushroom, however, most people don’t see that one. I’m sure thought that this is not the only thing that the author wants us to see in the character.

He could also be seen as a figure to teach children to be careful with strange people and strange objects. How can this be so? Well, if you look at the time period, the hookah would have been new to England so, people would have been unsure of how to think of it. You must also remember that stories were meant to teach lessons. Carroll would have known the feelings of the people and used them to create an uncomfortable feeling around the caterpillar, and what a great way to do it. Once more, I am sure that this is not the only thing the author wants us to see in the character. There are many ways to look at the catipillar and those are just two of them. So, your turn, what do you think of the caterpillar?

In Conclusion

The Alice project is nearing its end and the late nights of blogging and commenting are over.

It’s been an interesting and fun journey through Wonderland. Everyone (including my group and I)  in the Alice Project have all discovered something unique about Wonderland. Whether it be finding meaning in the text, looking at music with Wonderland, or anything else. We have all analyzed, read, and re-read and finally the long journey is over. We have come out more knowledgeable then when we came in.

My only regrets are that I can’t do it again (and that the ending of Alice was lackluster). Alice is over for now.

You never know: we may do another Alice Project over another book. I wish I started the project like how I am ending it, by working hard and writing like crazy. I myself believe I became a better writer and a better analyst due to the amount of work and thought required to do the project. I don’t think this has just happened to me, everybody seems to have become a better writer and a better analyst due to the project.

The ending of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not as sweet as the end of the Alice Project is going to be. The Alice Project may influence some little kid whose roaming the interned someday. I don’t know. Perhaps the Alice project will be on the internet for a while. As Alice has grown we have also grown mentally and a little bit physically. As Alice has been curious, she has made us curious, not just about her and her journeys, but about her and the rest of the world.

Time

Time is very important in our society today, the phrase “Time is Money” dominates the mentality of many citizens in our society. I also imagine it was also important in Lewis Carroll’s time too.

Time seems not to be a major in Wonderland, we are not given information about the sun rising or setting. The only reference to time I know of is the Little White rabbit saying something like I’m going to be late, I’m going to be late, the queen will cut off my head. Even then he doesn’t discuss time much, all he is saying is he’s going late. The rules of time in our world may not apply to Wonderland, being the nonsensical place that it is. It’s just strange for Wonderland to seem to have no concept of the sun rising and falling and a 24 hour day, but then again Wonderland is a crazy place where anything happens.

I assume the whole book occurs in daylight, because I know not of any reference to night. There may or not be a moon, it could be that Alice’s journey just takes a couple of hours so the moon does not rise in time. It’s strange how Carroll doesn’t put more references to time in the book. There may be more time references then just the rabbit saying I’m going to be late, because time is a very important factor in anything, and it seems strange how Carroll doesn’t reference time enough. Alice’s journey seems like it would take longer then a couple of hours, because Carroll doesn’t tell us of the amount of time that has passed by.

Time is an essential part of our lives and most likely it was important in Carroll’s life and it seems strange how he out time in Wonderland, but Wonderland is a crazy place so may have left time out on purpose.

Louis Vuitton Commercial: Wonderland Style

Once my Louis Vuitton’s Wonderland Collection was posted, Vivian remembered a Japanese commercial that was aired not too long ago that she remembered having to do with Louis Vuitton. When we looked it up on www.youtube.com, we discovered that the commercial was based off of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Here is the first commercial:

After we discovered the first commercial, we discovered a follow up to the commercial that was a short film celebrating the six years of collaboration between Takashi Murakami and Louis Vuitton. It is called Superflat First Love:

What do you think about Louis Vuitton’s advertisement?

Wonderfood

Some people have blogged about food and drink, and how it plays a major part of the book, they are correct.

Alice would not be able to go on her journeys without shrinking or growing bigger due to the effect of a food or drink. For example, after kicking the lizard named bill out of the chimney, a crowd of animals throw cake at her, which causes her to shrink. Then due to being small she meets the Caterpillar and continues the rest of her journey. Carroll uses food to change Alice’s size, which transitions her to other parts of her journey.

Why is food and drink so important in Alice in Wonderland?

Maybe because Carroll liked food or the real Alice personalities may have been influenced by food. Another scene in the book where food plays an interesting part is the part where Alice goes to the duchess’s house and she is in a bad mood because of the pepper. Later on after she meets the duchess in the house, she meets her again, and the duchess is nice not mean like she was while the pepper was around.

I think Carroll is playing around with the idea that sometimes food can influence personality. People’s personalities can easily be influenced by the smell of good or bad food. If something smells bad people will most likely act worse and usually when the food smells good people act better then if there was no smell or the food smelled bad.

Lewis Carroll uses the Duchess as an example of the personality change due to food. It also seems strange that Carroll showed the duchess changing due to the presence of pepper, but she doesn’t show Alice’s personality change due to a change in the food and drink that she consumes or is around.

Mock Wordle Soup

While sitting in Mr. Long’s room during my Study Hall, Mr. Long had an epiphany.

Being anxious, naive students Derek, Connor S., Devon, Benedict and I wanted to know why Mr. Long was “Oooing” and “Ahhhing” at his desk.

He showed us the site http://www.wordle.net/.

In general terms, Wordle takes a group of text (any size) and calculates how many times a word appears. Of course “a, an, the, but, etc.” usually do not count unless you edit your Wordle creation. Once you created your Wordle, you can choose to remove different words that are common in a certain language. For example, you can remove “Common English Words” or “Common Esperanto Words”.

It is quite amusing and fascinating to see which words are left in the Wordle and which were removed.

“Ahhing” myself, I started to question why the words in the Wordle was big or small. The four words that caught my eye were Alice, Wonderland, hidden and meaning. These would make sense for the fact that the story we are analyzing is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and we are trying to find the hidden meanings in and in-between the text. I would not be surprised if many if not all of the first two words in every team’s Wordle was Alice and Wonderland.

The one thing that interested me the most was the lack of the character’s names.

Other than Alice, the Caterpillar and Cat (note not Cheshire) are represented in tiny letters and no other characters appeared on the Wordle. The majority of the words were adjectives instead of nouns. I believe this shows a better connection between all of our blogs with the story of Alice by the consistant describing words.

Could that mean our team focused more on the hidden meanings within the whole story more than the analysis of the characters?

For example, here is our site Wordle that removed “Common Esperanto Words”

Another mouse shape! (Although this mouse must have lost some weight! *wink*)

First of all I had to look up the word Esperanto:

An artificial international language with a vocabulary based on word roots common to many European languages and a regularized system of inflection.

With my new knowledge of the language, it was odd to me that the and and were the most popular after taking away the common Esperanto words. Although this is an international language so it would be reasonable to suspect the most common English words to be the largest words. Its also interesting to see the number of tiny words, that were large in the removed English words, within the few large words, that weren’t even in the first Wordle.

Shows that there are other languages than English and we need to not assume that everyone in the world knows it. We aren’t the only people in the world.

If anyone else does a Wordle please tell me because I am curious to see what shapes/words pop up and why!

The first Wordle can be found here. The second Wordle can be found here.

Wonderland

While thinking of a blog entry, I went on you tube and searched Wonderland for no reason except curiosity.

I found many music videos about Wonderland, from Earth Wind and Fire to the classic Christmas song. Then I started thinking about who first coined the term Wonderland and after Google searching and looking through Wikipedia.

I found out that it seems like Louis Carroll was the first one to use the term Wonderland. Itt may be possible that my research was wrong, but I don’t think so. Probably there has been a person who said wonderland before Lewis Carroll did. Even if they did it seems like Louis Carroll is the first person to make it a widely known term, from what I could find out.

The term wonderland has been used in so many things, from books to songs to plays, and it all started from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland.

Why did the term Wonderland become so popular?

Perhaps it was just a catchy phrase and it caught on or the popularity of the book also made the phrase popular. It’s similar to that of Twilight, before the books came out people didn’t say the word twilight a lot, but now the word is said quite a lot among teenage girls and everybody else, due to the popularity of the books and movies.

A book or a movie can make one word or phrase very very popular, There are many examples, Arnold Schwarzenegger popularized the phrase “I will be back” in the movie The terminator. Whenever someone hears that they think of the governor of California and robots. Would this term have been popular without the accent of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the popularity of the movie? I highly doubt it.

The term Wonderland has become an iconic word that is usually associated with the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Without Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the term Wonderland would not be as famous as it is today.

Which Way?

I just recently adopted a kitten, so I couldn’t resist writing something related to cats.

The Cheshire Cat is perhaps one of the most well known and loved characters in Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat is perhaps the character most fit to act as a guide for Alice, simply because he offers her helpful insight into the workings of Wonderland. That might be due to the fact that out of all the characters, he can relate to the world from which she came the most.

The Cheshire Cat says, “A dog’s not mad. You grant that?’ `I suppose so,’ replies Alice. “Well, then,’ the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

His explanation of madness is very interesting indeed. This is wonderland where anything can be flipped inside out. It would not be weird for a cat to growl when pleased and wag its tail when angry. Is it not peculiar that the Cat thinks his behavior is unusual in a place where that kind of flipped behavior would be considered normal? Following that thought it is safe to assume that the Cheshire Cat can understand logical reasoning as Alice can. Successfully making him one of the few characters that can relate to Alice.

The advice he offers her can also be applied to a logical world, whereas most of the other characters offer rules that make no sense. For instance he states Alice will get somewhere if only she walks “long enough”. This piece of advice is true to the general ways of life. We never know where we are headed in life, but if we are persistent enough eventually we will get a result. The Cheshire Cat then points Alice in two directions, one to the Hatter, one to the March Hare. He goes on to state that whichever way she chooses will lead her to the same destination, madness. Therefore in Wonderland there is only one direction she can head towards, the madness connecting them all.

Lastly would like your opinion concerning an issue:

Which Cat Is Cuter?(poll)