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Fall 'Through the Looking Glass' into imagination
Humpty Dumpty is really a douche. Who knew?
Published April 16, 2010
When the film version of "Alice in Wonderland" came out, I rushed to see it. In 3-D. And it was pretty damn impressive.
Not nearly as creepy as the trailers made it seem, it was surprisingly light and fun compared to normal Burton fare.
It even made me feel a little better about the depreciating loss Missouri suffered earlier that afternoon.
Besides this, it also inspired me to re-read a classic that is almost always overlooked.
No, not "Alice's Adventures." Instead I found myself on Google Books searching for "Through the Looking Glass."
Of course, you can't get much stranger than Carroll's original, a story of talking plants and animals and unusually large and oddly named insects.
Unlike in the movie, Alice has not grown up. She is very much the same precocious 7-year-old and knows nothing of believing impossible things, let alone six before breakfast.
When Alice stands staring into the mirror above the fireplace of her drawing room, she imagines another country where everything is the same, only backward.
You must run to keep in place and walk one foot behind the other to meet your destination. "Living backwards" is not for the lazy and easily dissuaded.
Carroll doesn't venture far from the inspiration of his original tale.
Inspired by another little girl called Alice, he sets up "Through the Looking Glass" as an outrageous game of chess, played to get Alice to the Eighth Square.
Luckily for Alice, she's given a foolproof strategy that takes her across the board and brings her to her goal without erring.
Familiar characters of both nursery rhymes and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" appear, though in much a different capacity than I learned them. (Humpty Dumpty is a huge douche.)
In this country of looking-glass remixes, Alice can recall poems to identify the, er, people she meets. Those poems — familiar rhymes from her country — are all unpleasantly accurate, from monstrous crows to great falls. From the Tweedles to the goat lady, everyone seems obsessed with the idea of poetic riddles and fish.
Ill-fit logic contorts perceptions of what should be deemed normal. I incessantly found myself wanting to punch Lewis Carroll in the face, despite my amusement.
Relevant to the movie, there is a Jabberwocky, the Red Queen, the White Queen and much confusion, but the battle is not found in a grudge between sisters. Alice's confusion is less a product of her not believing herself a heroine and more in her failure to be able to remember things before they happen.
And what a wonderful idea it would be to remember what would happen next week, react to it and then have it happen. It would almost make the pain of studying for exams worth it, if I could know I'd get the A that I want.
Although Carroll told his stories to children, he sent a timeless message to adults reading them.
It would be nice to be able to play life out as a game of chess, complete with cheat sheet, and to know at the end I'd be queen.
But if my luck was anything like Alice's, being crowned wouldn't be the end of the test, and I'd wake up to find it was all a dream.
At least I'd have a great story and free trip to an exotic place through the gauzy mist of the Looking Glass.
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