While each of us goes through our own, unique paths toward our identity, there is a much broader, archetypal—and perhaps formulaic—, road that we follow: the road from the naiveté of childhood to adolescence, and eventually adulthood. Though it may be somewhat of a stretch, the first and second chapters of Alice in Wonderlandappeared to me as symbolic for Alice’s path toward a new, more adult identity. The passage I found to be most encompassing of this in the least amount of words is as follows:
‘That was a narrow escape!’ said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; ‘and now for the garden!’ and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, ‘and things are worse than ever,’ thought the poor child, ‘for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!’
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, ‘and in that case I can go back by railway,’ she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
‘I wish I hadn’t cried so much!’ said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. ‘I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.’
As children enter adolescence, they are often “frightened at the sudden change.” Alice’s change is from very physically small to being absurdly large, then small once again. She starts off small, like a naïve child in a much bigger, mysterious world. Her growth to immense size represents growth to adolescence—both a transformation of her physical identity and her emotional one, as shown by her crying. During adolescence, many experience an inflated sense of self; they are invincible, the center of their own universes, and the adults around them now appear small, insignificant, and don’t know much of anything. Though the latter two characteristics are difficult to find in that instance in the text, Alice’s growth could still serve as a symbol for the adolescent identity. Finally, her shrinking back to a small size represents the realization of full adulthood—they are not as “big” and invincible as the thought they were. They are a small fish in a big sea, a realization that many of us likely had upon first arriving at college. The pool of tears could represent how young adults have to reckon their new identity with their former teenage identity, dealing with the mistakes and remnants of their former life. As the story progresses thereafter, Alice takes on a more mature and adult persona in comparison to the nonsense surrounding her.
This interpretation of the scene forces us to question the degree to which our identities are formulaic, similar to how we asked in class how formulaic texts in a specific genre are. Interestingly, almost all texts from Shakespeare to the modern age follow a broad formula: roughly eighty percent of the word use in any given text includes simple words like “of,” “it,” “and,” and so on, while the remaining twenty percent is devoted to more complex and scarce words. If this rule of thumb is true, similar to the broad identity changes from childhood to adulthood, the remaining twenty percent is what gives a text or even a person their identity and individuality. This shows just how potent the remaining share of both words and experiences are to give each individual—text or person—their own identity. While my passage shows the broader, archetypal element in Alice’s identity, the defining and individual elements of her identity are explored more potently later in the text.