Alice in Wonderland

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Not long ago I asked a group of students if they had ever heard of Charles Lutwidge Dotson. None of them ever had. I then asked them if they had ever heard of Alice in Wonderland. All of them had. But none of them knew that Dotson was the author and that Lewis Carroll was a mere pseudonym. Really Dotson was a pretty important member of the faculty at Oxford University and was author of some rather outstanding mathematical treatises, not the least of which was Euclid and His Modern Rivals, published in 1879.

     Few people know about that one, but almost everyone knows about the fantasy of Alice which was written fourteen years previously. Originally done for Alice Liddell, the little daughter of the dean of Christ Church, it caught on with adults as well as with children, and some of the characters such as the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat, have become a part of our proverbial language.

     I am mentioning this because of the promotion of this clever blending of imagination and reality, irony and absurdity, in our day. I noticed in the book review sections of the Yuletide season a revival of interest in this 110-year-old story. There is a reason. Hard-nosed publishers do not generally sink their money if there is no market for their wares. But why should there be such a present concern for Alice in Wonderland?

     The answer seems to be obvious. It is the same as the reason why "Amazing Grace" written by John Newton, who died on December 21, 1807, was picked up by the remnants of the "Beat Generation" and elevated to a place among the ten most popular songs. Newton became master of a slave ship, played around with drugs, and ended up a general wastrel. But the grace of God plucked him like a brand out of the burning, or as he put it, "saved a wretch like me." And the young people who had felt condemned to a Zombie-like existence, damned by drugs, shunned by society, and doomed to a fate worse than death, found how amazing grace could really be. "I once was lost but now I'm found; was blind but now I see!" And they identified with John Newton, whose mother died before he was seven years old.

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     The same thing is true of Alice. Her world was suddenly changed. It was not that it was turned topsy-turvy and there was a question of how to get it right side up again. It was an unfamiliar world, an alien world, where remembered values had no real relevance. Was there any right side? Alice was altered psychologically, but there was a change of environment as well as physical size. Moreover, her companions seemed both real and unreal. And this brought up the big question. Since everything was changed, could it be possible that the change was in her, and the world was unchanged except in her eyes? And if the world was the same and she was different, was she really the person she had identified with previously, or was she someone else? If she was another, then who was she?

     Carroll pin-pointed the predicament by having Alice muse in these words: "Dear dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night! Let me think, was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle."

     Not long ago the police picked up a sixteen-year-old boy walking in one of our parks at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, a very dangerous thing to do. There was no sign of intoxication, no indication of drugs. But the boy did not know who he was. He could not even give his name. About two years ago I was in a "rap session" with a group of high school kids who were seniors. As we sat in the comfortable library, surrounded by the embalmed lore of the ages, I asked, "If you were given an opportunity to learn one thing with absolute certainty, what would you most like to know?" A straight-A student who was a wizard in mathematics, spoke up and said, "Who I really am!" I asked why. He replied, "Because then life for me might take on some sense."

     At another high school I passed out a list of ten questions and asked the students to check what they'd really like to have me discuss as we sat in a circle in the band practice room. The question for which most of them opted was "What's the real difference between me and my dog?" A sophomore girl came to me recently, crying and asking if she could talk to me. We sat down on the rug in the lounge and I asked, "What's the matter?" She recovered sufficiently to tell me, "Nothing makes sense. Nothing really matters. Nothing ever changes. It's all in a jumble and I'm all mixed up. Life is awful and I wish I didn't have to live."

     I understand the search for identity. It explains a lot of things which have happened in the last few years. Movie and television script writers have tried to dramatize it. Playwrights have attempted to stage it before our eyes. Fiction writers have sought to capture it for us. Serious analysts have tried to define it. Unfortunately, a lot of parents "have eyes and see not, ears have they and hear not." So they have continued in their comfortable and snug cocoons, wrapped about with the skeins of materialism, which insulate them from agonizing reality. But their children often know what their elders refuse to know. So the gap grows wider and the chasm deeper.

     A recent author of "a Christian study of contemporary writing," has said that the idea behind Alice in Wonderland, the whole pattern of its development, is that life viewed with a certain cold, rational clarity, can appear to be a nonsense story. There is ample demonstration, I think, for the validity of her observation. It was H. G. Wells who wrote, "There was a time when my little soul shone and was uplifted at the starry enigma of the sky. That has gone absolutely. Now I can go out and look at the stars as I look at the pattern of the wallpaper on a railway station waiting room." With all respect to this eminent historian, I wonder what he is doing at a railway station if he isn't going somewhere. It is silly to sit there if there is no train.

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     Joseph Krutch, the brilliant artist and critic, said, "There is no reason to suppose that man's own life has any more meaning than the life of the humblest insect that crawls from one annihilation to another." And Pablo Picasso, who translated the ripped-off, fragmented, crazy cockeyed world into bizarre art forms said, "Today, as you know, I am famous and rich. But when I am alone with my soul, I haven't the courage to consider myself as an artist."

     Alone with my soul! There is the secret, although expressed by an exponent of the distorted, the unsymmetric and the deformed. It is not the world in which I am that makes sense, but the world which is in me. I am not empty if my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I am not alienated if I am with him who said, "Henceforth I call you my friends." I am not alone if I remember he said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

     The world may press in upon me but it is powerless to crush me. There is a victory which overcomes the world and it overcomes my doubts now. The world will not have the final word because the world will pass away with the lusts thereof. It is he who does the will of God who abides forever. I know who I am. I'm the child of a king. I'm a son of God. I'm a friend of Jesus. There's no problem of personal identity with him who said, "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." The world outside may be populated with people who are as wild as the March Hare, crazy as a Mad Hatter, and who grin as vacuously as a Cheshire Cat. But Jesus is real, real in my soul! It is his reality which makes me real. It's not wonderland but wonderful grace that counts! Yes, Alice, there really is a Jesus.