It All Depends

Hello. My name is Cheryl Berzanskis and I’m from Amarillo.

My reading follows a predictable pattern — something about nature, a murder mystery, maybe poetry or something I feel I “ought” to read. However, for our autumn Radio Readers’ Book Club, I wanted to step outside any genre with which I am familiar and comfortable. I chose Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from the suggested list of literature for our seasonal theme, Through the Eyes of a Child. To call something literature for children or young adults, is not to imply the book or story is childish, shallow or simpler than books for adults. Rather it reflects the world of those who are growing and experiencing life, even hard life, for the first time. It can be mysterious, ambiguous, confusing and sometimes heroic.

What makes Alice completely outside my comfort zone is that reality as we know it occupies only a couple of paragraphs of the tale. Rather, Alice’s adventures are experienced in her summer’s daydream. I don’t do Not Real. In fact, I’m highly suspicious of it.

Yet. Yet I found this 12-chapter Victorian tale, available free on Project Gutenberg, enchanting and difficult and maddening. Enchanting because of its cast of characters, several of whom have made their way into popular culture such as the Mad Hatter and White Rabbit. Difficult because of the nonstop often illogical action and maddening because I could never figure out the point of the whole composition.

What is Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland? Is it nonsense literature? Is it an allegory? Political commentary? A tale that describes a girl’s own experience growing up? Or the unintended inspiration for Grace’s Slick’s “White Rabbit” at Woodstock? Is it children’s literature at all because of its often dark and dangerous edge? Author Lewis Carroll’s critics take all these positions and a few more.

In an interview with D&C Film in 2010, producer Tim Burton who brought “Alice in Wonderland” to life on the big screen said, “What I liked about this was that it explored the characters and what I feel that Carroll’s work did for me and other people in exploring your dream state, and using fantasy in your dream state to deal with real issues and problems in your life. People like to separate those things, but the fact is that they are things that are intertwined.”

Alice herself is mystified by her surroundings through the rabbit hole. From chapter four, “It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”

Our time down the rabbit hole of life among a cast of characters who live by a set of expectations, mores and experiences we don’t understand, can be as unsettling to us as young Alice. I wonder what would happen if we fell into a fairytale world of anthropomorphized animals, decidedly unmiddle class manners, and no obvious way out?

As we might seek guidance from a trusted friend in this dilemma, Alice sought counsel from the Cheshire Cat in her transformation from docile Victorian child to one more assertive and mature.

For the autumn Radio Readers Book Club on High Plains Public Radio, this has been Cheryl Berzanskis.