Week 11 Essay: Wisdom in the Looking-Glass

This week after reading the Through the Looking Glass Unit, I decided to focus my Essay topic on the idea of wisdom. I also throw some random ideas in about the idea of wisdom as we age.

Throughout the stories, especially in the last stories QueenAlice and Shaking and Waking, we see where the idea of wisdom is tested through riddles. The Red and White Queen are constantly asking Alice questions of what should be simple addition and subtraction but they add a twist to it. A dig minus a bone is a temper. Because when a dog loses his bone he is angry and what is left is his temper. The frog in this story also tricks Alice when she is trying to have someone open the door when she knocks. The frog replies by asking what the door is asking for it to need to be answered.

These concepts stretch our idea of wisdom. We often get stuck in the tradition wisdom that addition and subtraction are easy athematic equations. Rarely would someone answer a subtraction problem in the way that the Queens present them to Alice in this story. It goes to show that we can often become so narrow-minded in our interpretation of certain things. We let our wisdom be filtered or focused on the real and not the abstract. I think the riddles in these stories try to show us that: that we have wisdom and imagination but we must stretch ourselves to think in that abstract way. It is not natural to us.

I also found it interesting as I was reading the story to think about the wisdom I gain from the story now vs. when I was a kid. As a child hearing about Alice in Wonderland I thought about a magical cat and this great kingdom, which was pretty. Now, I realize the depth of the story and the message it was trying to convey. It is interesting to see how our perspectives change as we age. 

Alice in the dream-like world, illustration by John Tenniel