Essay Week 11: Alice in Wonderland

I was really excited for this week because I was able to read Alice in Wonderland. I had never seen the movie or even read the books, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew the general plot from what I had heard over the years, but other than that I had a blank slate of what was going to happen.

Traditional Alice in Wonderland

Photo Retrieved From Zerochan

It only took me reading to first story to wonder if whomever wrote it was on drugs, and then after reading the second story I decided that there was no way they weren’t on drugs. I found the stories to be rather hard to understand and to find meaning in them. One thing I found extremely odd was the riddle and the random poems throughout the stories. They didn’t make any sense to me and any questions I had about them were never addressed again or answered. I also found Alice to be a huge know it all, I honestly would have probably slapped her silly if I was around her for an extended period of time.

Although the overall themes were very peculiar, there wasn’t a single story in this unit that I didn’t like. I found that reading this unit was easy because I enjoyed reading each story. I was never bored, confused at times, but never bored. The only thing that I have to complain about with this unit is I feel like it is extremely difficult to rewrite a story from it. I stared at my computer for the longest time trying to rewrite this story. I would start, and write a paragraph but quickly delete it. I could not for the life of me figure out how to retell it in a manner that would make sense. The story itself is so scattered and has so much going on that I could not for the life of me figure out how to retell it. Plus, you can’t just tell one part of the story because then you would end it with a cliffhanger. This predicament was the only issue I had with this unit. For that reason, I chose not to write a blog post this week. Overall though, I truly enjoyed this unit and would recommend it to someone who has very strong retelling skills. 

Reading Diary Week 11: Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice was in a field with her sister when she saw a rabbit. Not just any rabbit though, this one talked and had a watch. She followed it down a rabbit hole and began to fall all the way down. I thought the part about how people at home would consider her brave because the fall was much worse than going down stairs was funny. I thought it was weird that she was talking to herself while she was falling, and that her conversations were so nonchalant. And how do you almost fall asleep while falling? After she lands, she is in a room and there is a tiny door that she can’t fit through. Suddenly a bottle appears on the table with the words “drink me” on it. Clearly Alice has never been to a frat part because she drinks it without even knowing what it is, although, at least she checks to see if it is marked poison. The juice then makes her small enough to go through the door to get to the garden, but now she can’t reach the key to open the door. Then she eats some cake. This girl is very adventurous. Then her feet start to disappear from what I understood. Then she went off into a rant about sending her feet presents and how it would be addressed. I found this part quite amusing. This part ends with her entering the garden and talking to a caterpillar that she finds on top of a giant mushroom.

Advice From a Caterpillar

The caterpillar and Alice started to talk and Alice lost her temper so the caterpillar told her not to do that. Alice also told the caterpillar about her frustrations about not remembering who she really is and how she is having trouble communicating.  Then the caterpillar went into a long poem about Father William. I do not like poetry and this form of writing so I found it hard to understand. Or maybe Alice told the poem, that was also confusing to me. The caterpillar then smoked some hookah, and started to walk away but as he was walking away stated that one side would make her grow taller and the other shorter. The caterpillar was referring to the mushroom, so Alice ate a bit of both sides to figure out which one would make her a little bigger. Suddenly a pigeon mistook her for a serpent since the mushroom made her look like one. Then the pigeon let her go, but only after accusing her of want to eat its’ eggs. Alice then continued eating part of the mushroom until she was her desired height at 9 inches.

Pig and Pepper

So Alice decides to enter a house she sees. There is a man outside, he is very odd and doesn’t really answer her questions about getting into the house. Eventually Alice just goes in and she sees a cook, a cat, and a mother nursing a baby. Then Alice goes on into conversation with the Duchess about the cat and other nonsense. Then the duchess sings a rather odd lullaby to her baby. The Alice took the baby as the Duchess left to go play croquet with the Queen. Then she let the baby go off into the woods because it was more of a pig than a baby. Then the cat and Alice had a conversation and the cat explained that everyone there was mad/crazy. Then the cat said he would see Alice at the Queen’s place and disappeared. So Alice went on her journey. 

A Mad Tea Party

Alice practically invites herself to a tea party when she sees there are several chairs and only three people there. They get upset with her and then start talking about riddles. They gave her a riddle that they didn’t even know the answer to. It was very odd. Then the hatter explained why it is always tea time and how it happened when the queen got upset at a music concert saying they were killing time. So time is forever stuck at 6 o’clock which is tea time. Then the dormouse started to tell them all a story. Alice asks a lot of questions. She always kind of acts like a know it all too.  The story didn’t make any sense and so Alice got mad and left. She then saw a tree with a door in it and it led her into the garden.

The Queen’s Croquet Ground

So there were gardeners painting flowers red in fear that the queen would see they had accidentally planted a white rose bush. Then the queen came and wanted to behead Alice, and then saw the flowers and wanted the gardeners beheaded. Alice said no to the queen and so the queen asked her to play croquet. It was odd and a lot happened at once. When Alice went to play croquet she realized how hard it was since they used live animals to play with, and even soldiers as the arches. The queen would get upset with all of the players and start saying “Off with their heads.” Alice started talking to the Cheshire cat, which I couldn’t understand if it was in the sky or what. Anyways, the queen wanted it to be beheaded but it only had a head so they started to argue about how you behead something that is only a head and then the cat disappeared.

Who Stole the Tarts?

This next scene is in a courtroom; they are trying to determine who stole the tarts. The first witness is the hatter. He was a nervous wreck and could barely get out what he was trying to say. The next witness was the cook. Then the rabbit got up to say who the next witness was and he read off Alice’s name. Plot twist!!!

Alice’s Evidence

They call Alice up and she tells them that she has no evidence. She keeps growing bigger and bigger. They bring a note they found and it has a poem on it, which is just really confusing. Alice stands up to the queen who says to behead her, which would be very difficult since Alice is now her normal size.  Then the cards start flying up to attack Alice, and suddenly she awakes from this dream and tells her sister what had happened as best as she could. 

Essay Week 10: Indian Fairy Tales

I was very discouraged by the Indian reading unit last week when I read the Native American Marriage Tales. I did not like that unit, and for this reason I was not looing forward to having to read another Indian unit this week. However, this week I chose to read the Indian Fairy Tales unit and I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it.

Picture of Indian

Picture Retrieved From Guttenberg

The first thing I enjoyed about this unit is that it is set up in a storytelling style with Iagoo as the narrator. Other characters are introduced, however, Iagoo is the one that tells each story. Each story then was relatively straightforward and easy to understand. The stories were interesting and full of adventure.

I wrote my story this week about the Fairy Bride. I really liked this story, however, not as much as How the Summer Came. I would have retold this story, however, it was too long and had too much detail to rewrite. One thing about this unit that was difficult to understand were the names of people. I understand they were foreign names, however, it makes it much more difficult to read when they can’t even be pronounced. It was for this reason that when I rewrote my story this week, I changed the girl’s name to Anna.

An additional story that I really liked was the Child of the Evening Star. This story reminded me of a story I had read a few weeks back called The Child of Ill Luck and the Favorite of Fortune. This is because the main plot of the story is that a girl is very well off and beautiful. She has several suitors, however, she chooses and ugly man to marry because she sees something good in him. In the end, the man ends up being very attractive and successful. I like these stories because they show that you should always take into consideration that what is on the inside is what counts, and you will have a better life if you realize that.

Overall, I liked this unit. I wouldn’t say it is my favorite but it was a huge upgrade from the stories I read last week. I got the idea to read this unit from when I was commenting on someone’s blog post from last week, and so I am glad that the blog comments give me the opportunity to explore other units. I am looking forward to seeing what next week has to offer now!

Storytelling Week 7: How Wisdom Became Property of the Human Race

How Wisdom Became Property of the Human Race

FATHER: Are you ready for bed, Charlotte? It's about that time.

CHARLOTTE: No, Daddy, I don't want to go to sleep. Will you please tell me a story first?

FATHER: Okay, but only if you promise to try your best to understand the meaning behind it and then go straight to sleep after. How does that sound? Deal?

Charlotte, “Yes sir! I always love it when you tell me stories!”

FATHER: Once upon a time there was a magical spider man who was in charge of distributing wisdom throughout the land. This man’s name was Anansi. People came to Anansi every day for advice. Whenever they came, he then was able to pass his wisdom down to them. Almost every person in the land had a bit of wisdom.

One day, the people of the land deceived the magical man Anansi and made fun of him. Anansi was greatly offended by their lack of gratitude for all he had done for them. He was so angered that he decided that he would take all of their wisdom back as a punishment. So what did he do? He extracted every single person’s wisdom and placed it in a giant pot.

Not knowing that his son was following him, Anansi set out into the forest to hide the pot of wisdom and make sure no one could ever retrieve it. He decided he would hide the wisdom at the top of a giant tree. The tree was the biggest tree he could find and was well over a hundred yards tall. Anansi tried several times to climb the tree while having the pot strapped to his chest. Every time he tried, he would get a few steps up and then fall. Anansi tried several times but was still not able to successfully climb the tree.

Tree Anansi tried to climb

Photo Retrieved From Flickr

The son, getting sick and tired of watching his father fall, decided to approach his father who was starting to climb back up the tree. The boy then called out to his father, who was several branches up at this point, and said, "Father, why don't you just strap the pot onto your back? If you do that, then you will be able to use your arms to grip the tree. Surely that will make climbing the tree much easier for you." The magical man realized that his son had more wisdom than he did and in a fit of anger purposely dropped the pot from his position in the tree. The pot fell to the ground and the wisdom flew out and spread to all of the people in the land. Realizing he had been defeated and lost all of his wisdom, Anansi came down from the tree and walked home with his son.

FATHER: And that’s the end of the story. What did you think?

CHARLOTTE: I think I learned that children are smarter than their parents and that by you telling me this story I was able to stay up an hour later than my bedtime, just like I had wanted! Thanks, Daddy!!!

FATHER: Kids these days.

The End!

Author’s note: I retold this story in the form of a bedtime story. The father and the daughter Charlotte are not in the original story, but I thought it would be cute to add a father and daughter so she could make a comment to sound more wise than her father and mirror what happened in the story. I also added these characters so that way the bedtime story would work. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t have been able to use this format. Although I didn’t go into detail about these two characters, their role in the story is essential. As far as the actual story goes, other than a few details and imagery that I added, the story about Anansi and wisdom was relatively the same. I chose to stay close to the plot of the story because I had already added two new characters and I think changing the plot of the actual story would be doing it a disservice. An important thing to remember about this unit is that Anansi is generally not a good person and pays for it in several stories. This is just one example of several where his selfishness gets him nowhere and his son outsmarts him. 

Another important thing to note is, although is is not mentioned in the story, "Anansi" is a word that means spider. Additionally, the son's name is Kweku Tsin. I chose to leave his name out though because I personally find names that are difficult like this to confuse me when I am reading stories. I prefer simple names that I am more familiar with. 

Bibliography:West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).