9-20 for 9-29

1.       

“The Knight looked surprised at the question. ‘What does it matter where my body happens to be?’ he said. ‘My mind goes on working all the same.’” (AA page 241)

Haha, now I found this quite amusing. I can just imagine a character whose body walks off on its own and his head remains still, continuously talking. Kind of creepy, for sure, but funny in a quirky way too, like in the style of Tim Burton. This scene, though, becomes very important later on in the novel. I will express the significance of the Knight in the next quote.

2.       

“Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterward she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been yesterday –the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight –the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her –the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet –and the black shadows of the forest behind –all this she took in like a picture, as, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half-dream, to the melancholy music of the song.” (AA page 243-244)

Fun fact: I looked up this quote online and I found that it is the longest sentence in both the Alice books. The strong detail and word choice makes me more curious about Lewis Carroll as a photographer, since that was one of the things we can choose to learn about. The interesting thing about the passage is that even though it is clearly about Alice and her thoughts, the language definitely sounds more like Lewis Carroll and his thoughts instead. I also notice how Alice recalls the White Knight more clearly in her head, probably because the White Knight is the only character who shows compassion and kindness to Alice, unlike… everyone else in the Looking-Glass World.

3.       

“—it really was a kitten, after all.” (AA page 268)

I can’t believe that a novel of this caliber has a chapter that consists of literally one line. I found it cool how the illustrations are parallels of each other, between Chapters 10 and 11. However, it gets me to wonder why the first novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland didn’t do this… I found the abruptly short chapter very effective in showing Alice *wake up*, so maybe both novels should have it?

4.       

“It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr. ‘If they would only purr for ‘yes,’ and mew for ‘no,’ or any rule of that sort,’ she had said, ‘so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?’” (AA page 269)

I found this humorous and surprisingly layered, because the scene suggests something a bit more than just what is literally going on. In a literal sense, the passage is talking about how it is difficult, no, impossible to talk to an animal because that animal is just going to make the same sound over and over. However, I somehow saw this as a parallel to any character who just talks in his/her language, regardless of who the other person is. I think this passage says something about communication in general, how communication is never one-sided but rather a shared exchange between two parties.

5.       

“Life, what is it but a dream?” (AA page 273)

The very ending of Through the Looking-Glass is a poem, with the above quote being the last line of the poem. This line reminds me of a scene earlier in the novel, involving the Red King’s dream and Alice’s concerns about her own existence. As we can guess from the words “life” and “dream,” the line makes us wonder if life is more than just a dream, since all we can say about our lives is that they’re made of memories and other elements that can be deemed meaningless by other people. The parallel imagery of the Looking-Glass world and the real world (ex. The room arrangement) suggests more thought-provoking ideas. Actually, this is very similar to one of my favorite movies of all time: Pan’s Labyrinth. In that film, there is an uncertainty as to whether or not the fantasy elements are real. Throughout the film, the images in the real world are very similar to the images in the fantasy world, suggesting the same thing that Looking-Glass seems to be suggesting here.