Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

Alices Adventures in Wonderland

That was weird.

I can't figure out why this is on a must read list or why it's a celebrated children's book or why it was even written.  I'm pretty sure there was no plot flow.  Characters just popped in the story and when you figured out who they were they left and somebody else appeared.  I'm going to go read some notes on this book and come back...

Okay, back: apparently some reverend who wrote under the name of Lewis Carroll made this story up for three girls while on a boating trip in the 1850's.  Alice was one of the girls; she asked the story be written down and became the namesake of the book.  The characters evidently represent people in her life (although I have no clue how a blind reader can fully understand all the different characters).  Carroll was a mathematician and so the book toys with mathematics and logic throughout.  This is quite obvious but still quite weird in the story.

I also came across notes that believe Carroll was clearly high while writing this book and this explains all the bizarre episodes.

I believe the basis of the story is living in a child's imagination.  At the end of the book Alice is woken up from a dream by her older sister who longingly wishes to live like Alice does.  Frequently the book references Alice being able to believe anything in this place; coupled with the closing paragraph this means anything can happen in her imagination.  I've always enjoyed the power of imagination - it's free and boundless, but I'm not sure it makes a great setting for a novel.

The part I enjoyed of the book is the unadulterated innocence of a child's mind.  Alice is in part able to believe all of these things in her imagination because she has not become limited by reality.  In Jesus' ministry he said, "whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" (Luke 18:17).  We must believe in the power of God with the limitless view of a child accept his greatness.  This does not mean that children are easily deceived; rather, that God is infinite and our minds have become trained to a limited reality.  As seen in Alice, it is children who can allow an infinite God - one that can do more than we can possibly imagine because He was powers that we cannot feign believe exist.