During our time discussing Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories, we’ve talked at length about the sort of whimsy and magic that makes Wonderland special, and while it took me a few days to make the connection, soon after we finished the Alice unit, I realized that one of my favorite songs, Wonders of the Younger by the Plain White Tee’s, heavily draws up this theme of childhood whimsy and wonder. I will attempt to insert the youtube link to this song here, but I’m not great with technology, so I apologize if the link is for whatever reason unavailable. What I find particularly interesting about Wonders of the Younger as it relates to Wonderland, is that both seem to view childhood as a special time of your life where the line between fantasy and reality is blurred to the point of non existence. Alice, as a child is able to visit Wonderland, a world characterized by its fantasy elements, like talking animals and food that can make you change size, and comprehend this and adapt with only mild confusion, because her youth helps her to accept the fantastical elements of Wonderland as fact much easier than a grown adult would. Whereas, in Wonders of the Younger, much of the song is about fictional, make-believe things that are described as if they’re real, because as a child, they are. An example of this is the line “Werewolves and Vampires are out for the kill, if none of them get you the Boogieman will.” In this line alone, three fictional fantasy characters are described as if they were indisputably real, because as stated earlier, to a child, they are. The way both the Alice stories and Wonders of the Younger, play with the idea of children’s ability to wholeheartedly accept and believe in the fantastical, otherwise known as their sense of wonder, is indicative of what seems to be a universal feeling of youth as inherently special.
English Majors Practising Criticism