The White Rabbit

You’ve all heard of the White Rabbit, I’m sure. He is the first Wonderland character Alice sees. She is sitting on the banks of the river with her sister, and not paying any attention to the book she is reading her, when “suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her”. Notice the capitalization of White Rabbit. It’s a name, not just a description of character guys. :]

Alice doesn’t find anything odd about the White Rabbit, even when he shouts to himself “Oh dear, oh dear! I shall be too late!”. She doesn’t see anything strange about a talking animal, and only becomes interested in him when he takes out his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket. She is interested first because she has never seen a rabbit with a pocket watch or a waistcoat to keep it in.

You may have read the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and never noticed that Alice didn’t get curious about the rabbit until he takes out his watch. We would’ve been interested in him right when we heard him speak, after all, who here has ever heard an animal talk? This makes many people wonder. Why didn’t Alice jump to her feet and begin following the White Rabbit when she heard him talk? That’s what any of us would’ve done. But she doesn’t seem to care that he spoke, and neither does she doubt what she heard (as any of us would’ve done). Instead, she is very passive about the fact that he can speak, almost as if hearing animals talk is normal to her. Is it? She is a six or seven year old girl, after all. It could’ve been that she is used to pretending things, and could’ve been convinced that she only imagined the rabbit talked, as she might’ve done before with other animals back at home. This could mean that she only grew interested in him because she hadn’t imagined any of her animal friends with a waistcoat or a pocket watch.

My second question to you is, why is she so obsessed with this rabbit? Could he represent something more? Is he a symbol of dreams, perhaps? Something interesting that we follow around on some wild goose chase that many of us can never find? Alice often looses sight of the White Rabbit on her journey through Wonderland, and is always looking for him. Perhaps he is a representation of her childhood that is slowly slipping away.

Either way, the White Rabbit is an interesting character. He is always shouting that he is late, though he never says what he is late for (despite the fact the first Alice in Wonderland Disney movie says that he is late for a very important date, which he does not say in the books mind you). People in this day and age are always in a hurry, I think, and the White Rabbit reminds me  of them. :] 

Did You Know…

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has always been classified as a children’s book. You can go to any local bookstore and find it sitting on a shelf underneath the children’s section. Hardly ever is it placed in the young adult or even the adult section. Both of the famous Carroll stories Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass should never be placed under the children’s section because they are far from a children’s book. The books were written for a child, Alice Liddell, whom Lewis Carroll had a friendship with. But just because they were written to suit the whim of a six year old girl does not mean that the books are children’s stories. The books follows the fairy-tale structure, with interesting characters and the element of magic lingering in the air, but the story holds more to it than just funny characters and a strange new world. It presents mature readers with life lessons that are universally known, but hardly ever practiced. The books show a journey through life, the stages of growing up, and the complexities that life can offer. Lewis Carroll was, after all, a mathematician. I highly doubt he would write just any fairy-tale, but rather try to incorporate as many lessons and morals into it as humanly possible.

The purpose of this blog is to analyze the Alice books and take them apart piece by piece. I want to give people a better understanding of what the books mean rather than letting people focus on the humor of the characters and scenes. The books have much more too them than humor. Did you know that some of the characters were based on real-life people? For instance the Queen of Hearts, renown for her favorite phrase “off with his head!”, was really based on Queen Victoria. Did you know that the Mad Hatter was actually based on a popular saying at Lewis Carroll’s time, “You’re as mad as a hatter”? Hatters back then didn’t have all the fancy stuff to use as we do now, and they often obtained mercury poisoning through curing felt, causing them to literally go mad.

There’s many things that people don’t know about the Alice books, and many questions people may want answered. Hopefully, I can help provide some insight on these crazy stories, and maybe you’ll get a better understanding of just how important they really are.