Throughout the years, I’ve dealt with many different English classes of varying difficulty, that have all taught me important things to apply to texts whenever possible. This class is no exception, and through the semester I’ve learned many more important skills to use when analyzing texts. There are many things that I have been able to see in a different light because of this class; things that many people don’t even think or worry about in the first place. What I’m trying to say is, this class has probably taught me the most important analysis-based skills I will need, and I think this for a variety of reasons. Continue reading “What Have We Learned?”
Alice’s Adventures With Identity
For this blog post, I chose a passage from Alice Through The Looking Glass chapter 4, in which Alice discusses the possibility of being a figment of imagination in the mind of the Red King.
“He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?”
Alice said “Nobody can guess that.”
“Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?”
“Where I am now, of course,” said Alice.
“Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!”
“If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum, “you’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!”
This passage clearly discusses the idea of identity in an interesting, meta/fourth wall breaking way. The passage raises an important, slightly paradoxical question about identity: how do I know I exist? This passage basically makes us as readers question whether we are actually “real”, and if we are who we think we are. The passage raises this question through it’s use of dialogue between Alice, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, where the three clearly discuss what would happen if the king were to awake–coming upon the conclusion that Alice herself would cease to exist as she may only be a figment of the king’s imagination. Alice believes that she is herself, and that she is real. However, Tweedledee and Tweedledum tell her otherwise, saying that she is merely a dream in the mind of the Red King. This expertly raises the question of “How do I know I exist?” because it makes the reader think if maybe they themselves are a figment of imagination, without them even realizing. I believe the reason this is done is that Lewis Carroll wanted the reader to read this passage, stop, and really make them think. This was his way of messing with the readers’ heads in a clever, fun way. This might also have been done purely as a way for Carroll to make readers aware that their minds could be so much more open and ready to perceive things if they really try. I believe this might also be a reason because the idea of being a figment of someone’s imagination is so thought-provoking and crazy that it really makes the reader “expand their thoughts” as a way to truly wrap their heads around the idea.
Another thing involving the aforementioned question that the passage does is toy with it in a way that proves the question is nearly impossible to answer. The passage does this once again through the exchanges of Alice and her two companions. Basically, what can be alluded to through this chunk of text is that Alice really has no way of knowing if she is herself, unless the king wakes up, in which case she STILL wouldn’t know, as she would cease to exist and become literally nothing. This proves that the question is pretty much impossible to answer because: how would you truly find out you were real? There’s not much one can do in a situation like this and hypothetically, if the person who “created” you woke up, you’d vanish and never find your answer. The passage utilizes the witty remarks from Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Alice’s confusion as a clever way to drive this point home; Alice doesn’t understand that she could be a dream, but Tweedledee/Tweedledum explain that it is very possible, but that the only way to know is for the King to wake up, in which case Alice goes POOF!
Overall, this passage does a very good job of raising an unanswerable, totally mind-bending question as well as providing clever dialogue to toy with the reader and with the idea that the question will inevitably, and perhaps agonizingly, remain unanswered.
Thoreau Makes Us Think
Henry David Thoreau is a very well known author and philosopher with many different works familiar to people around the world. One of his works, Walden, tells of his experiences when moving to and living in a house/cabin by Walden Pond. Throughout this book, he discusses various different things that make us as readers stop to theorize about what he is saying and how it can be applied to us. I will be choosing one passage that I think captures this idea of the reader stopping and theorizing as perfectly as possible.
The passage chosen for this blogpost is from the chapter “Where I Lived, And What I Lived For”, and consists of paragraph 21. In that paragraph, Thoreau discusses the idea of focusing on life, and not on things that are fake or do not matter. I think this passage works well for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fact that it is a very deep, logical passage of text. This happens in particular in the beginning line of paragraph 21:
“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.”
Basically, Thoreau is stating that we as people focus too much on superficial and unimportant things, and that it severely limits us. This makes us, the readers, think because it is still a very relevant idea, so much so that I myself can connect it to my relationship with technology. What I mean by this is, the modern equivalent of this idea would be the fact that so many people are preoccupied with their phones, laptops, tvs and more that they, or we, limit them/ourselves because we’re not looking at life as it truly is. This leads me into why it is necessary–it is necessary because it will almost always be relevant. It is a lesson to be learned and taught by many, in the sense that it is a very important idea. It is also necessary because people will always choose to focus on the “easier” things to handle in life, as opposed to the things they need to. Thoreau is basically “calling out” us as a society, showing us our issues and how we can resolve them in a pretty simple way. Not everybody will see this or learn from this though, which is why it is necessary–it will always be there to learn from.
Another good example from paragraph 21 would be this line:
“Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.”
Thoreau is pretty much throwing shade at adults, saying that their children have a better understanding of life than they do. This works because it makes the reader think about whether this is actually true or not–And I have to kind of believe that it is. It criticizes adults who don’t seem to focus on life or really care that it’s happening by basically saying their children know it better than they do. This really allows the reader to think about the way they go about seeing their life, as a metaphorical “child” or “adult”, and helps them see the issues with how they view it. Thoreau also makes this feel like a necessary spot to stop reading and to start theorizing because of the way he uses his criticism. He is basically allowing the reader to really think about their life through use of criticism in its simplest form–comparing one thing to another in an obviously critical way. By saying children know better than adults about how life should be, he effectively makes this a necessary area for theorizing because it causes the person reading to think if they are really less well-versed in life than a child, and effectively leads them to try and make changes to themselves and their unfocused views on life.