Week 11 Reading Diary: Looking Glass Unit

This week I decided to focus on the Looking Glass unit and specifically the story entitled the Looking-Glass House. It seemed the most interesting to me how Alice ponders this glass house and how it appears.

Illustration by John Tenniel

She is explaining to her cats how she wishes she could see what was behind the fireplace. She ponders “I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too — but that may be only pretense, just to make it look as if they had a fire.” You can really imagine the young Alice debating these ideas. When we are young our imagination is vast and you can see that as Alice tries to find any explanation for the smoke. She also finds it amazing how when she holds up a book. They hold up one in the other room. She does not understand the concept of a mirror, as many children don’t, and believes some other people are on the other side doing exactly as she does.

I took the time to look up the definition of looking glass and there were multiple. 1. A mirror  2. Being or involving the opposite of what is normal or expected. The first was an obvious one. But I think the second is important to this story too. Nothing in the story of Alice in Wonderland or Alice and the Looking Glass is normal or expected.

Her imagination continues as she melts into the looking glass room and explores what is in there: talking pawns, and kings, and queens. The fire in the fireplace is not just a fire but a volcano! The king and queen cannot see or hear her which I found interesting. The words of the poem are backwards as I expected from the looking glass element of the room. 

______________________________________________________________________

 

The Queens, Illustration by John Tenniel

One of my favorite quotes comes from the beginning of the story Queen Alice. It reads: “if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for YOU to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything.” I love this quote for the message it presents. If you always ask for permission to speak, then nothing ever gets spoken. The Queen then later makes another point about speaking that is very important. Alice tries to change her answer to a question but the Red Queen replies: 'when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.” It is true that, although, we can apologize for the things we say, we can never truly take them back. We must face the consequences of our words.

The story continues with these types of riddles where the Red and White Queens quiz Alice on her mathematics skills and trick her with their cleverness. When you subtract a bone from a dog, Alice said nothing is left but the queen says that, the dog will be mad and therefore his temper will remain. An unusual answer to a mathematics question. The riddles continue with a frog who is perplexed when Alice asks who is to answer the door. The frog asks “What’s the door been asking of?” and at first I did not understand this riddle. But, then I realized the frog was spinning the wording to mean that if someone is to answer the door then the door must ask something. I enjoyed this story for the play on words and riddle-like aspect of it. It made me realize we often look so one-sided at things and do not realize the many ways that different people can interpret the same thing.