Snap! alice revisited

Not probably what you are thinking, but I am now writing this from under my duvet awaiting husband to wake up and drive me to hospital. Not quite what a person needs at 3.30am, but welcome to my life. A simple walk down the stairs, no falling or slipping and my knee now looks like it was at the superbowl attached some strong receiver.Anyway in this pain addled state I have two choices, cry like a defeated baby ( which is what I really want to do) or write which is quieter and hopefully more productive.  I've chosen the later and hopefully I get taken to hospital before this blog becomes something worthy of an Alice in wonderland dream.

Actually it probably will be just that as that's where my mind was going before I literally snapped to a pain driven state of intoxication with no alcohol. The symbolism of Alice and it's social relevance was what I was pondering. Mix in the fact we are now bereft of the calming tones of Alan Rickman as Absalom and you can probably tell where I going to start.

It is my love for the fore mentioned  book and my appreciation for the Tim Burton interpretation that made me ask just how much of the book is now relevant again to society. Once you kick the obviously over the top, whimsy of the childish side if the book. The characters are actually very deep , if in fact very scathing, descriptions of social behaviour. Sure we all know the story of the mad hatter and what he represents, but it's some of the other characters I like to dig a litter deeper into.

Let's look at the White rabbit, a character that's easily identified on a physical level. However it's the personality I love. The constant state of panic and uncertainty that leads to the infamous line "I'm late". If you look at the social standing of the rabbit, he is neither gentry nor pauper, but there to symbolise what was a new social class of educated workers. His panic was derived from his own need to appease everyone as he knew not what he was. That was then, now a days he could easily be every administration worker the world over. In constant fear of targets and such like.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are probably my least favourite characters of the series. Mainly because they represent the insipid side of social interaction. They are the sheep who only have any opinion if there is more than person to say it. They lack back bone but happily indulge in the profits of success. A characteristic we probably all witnessed in today's workplace.

Then there is the walrus and the carpenter oh these were such clever characters so easily overlooked. When perhaps they are the most developed and repulsive characters in the books. They happily lead the oysters to their death, for the benefit of no one but the walrus and the carpenter themselves I always suspected they were based on the mill owners of the time, but now I wonder if it was more to symbolise the government and their ways to entrap the masses to sacrifice themselves for the good of the nation. Either way these characters are actually very disturbing for any child's novel.

Then we end up at the wise (if dubiously stoned) caterpillar, or Absalom as the Burton film named him.  Is he just the voice of reason concentrated into one character, or is he more? I suspect he is actually the journey of life itself hence the use of a pipe of sorts. The fact he is a caterpillar is the interesting bit, a creature of 4 very different stages of life, egg, caterpillar, larvae, butterfly.  The egg is childhood , caterpillar, adulthood, larvae old age  and the butterfly death?  In which case he is the most symbolic character of all and the reason Alice listens to him.

Just in these few questions and thoughts I think you can see where I am getting my thought process from and why I feel this book us just a applicable now to adult and child alike as it was when it was written. If you agree with this or just want me to take this deeper with a deeper look at other character please comment,  as I would love to go further  especially with Cheshire cat.

But for now I'll leave you thinking on what I have, whilst I head off to my own little rabbit hole and pray I don't need to eat or drink anything from the room at the bottom of that rabbit hole