| After reading Yolens Briar Rose, I was indeed excited to see how the other books would turn out. Now that I have started Alice and Wonderland, I find myself disappointed. Briar Rose might just turn out to be one of the few books I get to read this semester and actually like. Two semesters ago, Chico States theatre department did Alice and wonderland the play, and I found it very dark and scary. Now that I have began this book, I realize that it must have been based on Lewis' version. I had never before heard of a rat telling alice stories in a puddle of water. I find that this book makes Alice out to be one of the dumbest characters I have ever read about, with a touch of schizophrenia. Just the few begining conversations she has had with herself has driven me crazy. The play that I saw, made it so that the catepillar was absolutely on drugs, and from the description of the catepillar in this book, I dont think there was much embellishment. If I could ask Lewis, Carrol a question I think I would have to ask why? Why everything. Im still stuck on the cartoon version where everything is nice. Here the rabbits fear of the queen and the way he demands the lizard to get Alice out of his house makes him appear to have an anger problem. This book is just a bit unique, and i hope it turns out better in the end |
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Fantasy
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3 comments:
I would have to agree that Alice in Wonderland, is a very dark book and is not what I remember from the Disney movie of my youth. I do appreciate the craziness that Carroll shows in this book, and that had he not written these stories then the "contaminated" versions whould not have been either.
An interesting thing about this book is that many people don't realize that Carroll was actually the first one to write it and tell this story. My book was sitting on my desk and my roommate picked it up and said "I don't know about this class, Jenn, I don't like these wierd versions of the books you read." I then let her know that this was the original, and she was shocked and explained that she would never let her children read a book with a scary picture on the front.
Reading Alice in Wonderland is somewhat confusing and hard to follow. Carroll skips around and makes it difficult to understand.
I was aware in the beginning that this would be an interesting book to read because Carroll's work has been looked over by psychologists and they say it shows different types of personality disorders.
As a child, Alice In Wonderland was not one of my favorite Disney movies. Even to this day, I don't really remember all of the details of the movie so it is kind of hard for me to compare Carroll's book to the Disney movie. However, I do agree that Alice talking to herself is rather annoying. She tends to go off in a tangent and I end up getting confused or skimming through the conversations with herself. I kind of disagree with the point that the cartoon version is nice. From what I remember, I didn't really like the Disney version because the characters were rude to Alice. I guess I will have to watch the cartoon again to refresh my memory :) I agree with Jennifer that overall this book is confusing and hard to read. I also hope that Alice In Wonderland has a better ending.
It's seems to me that I'm enjoying Alice more than most of my peers... I like it, I like the sillyness it introduces (the mouse trying to cure everyone's wetness by telling a dry story) and I appreaciate Carroll's intertwining of his and Alice's world at the time into the background and scenary. This isn't by far my favorite fantasy book, I have to agree with others in that it seems to skip around as though cohesiveness in a fantasy world isn't possible or desirable- or maybe it skips to help keep the fantasy vibrant. But then again, if Alice is really the product of a spur of the moment story for the real Alice, then it seems appropriate that it would be a little jumbled (I've tried to make up my stories on my own at my daughter's request and they were very crazy with a ton of inconsistencies but that's what seemed to appeal to her). So many of the characters are cracking me up throughout, it's funny because Alice is young but trying to be smart while all the characters seem to be older yet reason like a 2 year old, the Footman espcially and his logic behind letting/not letting Alice through the door! This book seems just funny to me and I love the play on words (like the whole have some more tea conversation). I know I have seen some of this in the cartoon but I don't remember thinking it was all that funny then, but now it tickles me. I think I was too young to quite understand it and now having been around a lot of kids I realize that this is how they talk or reason sometimes- like the Caucus-race, there were no rules, barely a beginning, no one knew where the middle was and it had nothing but an aburpt ending which is the type of games I've seen kids play over and over and they seem to have lots of fun. I don't see how this relates to personality disorders, maybe when Alice talks to herself or pretends to be 2 different people, but agian this isn't uncommon with children and after all, wasn't this book inspired and written for just that mentality?
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