The Character of Alice

The Character of Alice

From 'A Question of Presence', by Sergio Antonio

Alice is the main character of the esoteric book, Alice in Wonderland. Its conscious author, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, is better known as Lewis Carroll.

To me, Alice is like a student just beginning this work. In a way she is observing ‘I’, the part that begins to see but hasn’t yet acquired the control belonging to the steward.

She is used to relying on what she has been taught: a set of logical, simple, unequivocal rules. If she sticks to them, she will be able to safeguard her imaginary picture as a good and sensible child. But she finds herself thrown into an adventure where, invariably, what happens does not correspond at all to what should happen, according to her schooling.

Rabbits talk, as do cats, mice, and every other creature and object, including playing cards. The chasm that swallows her is a never-ending plunge: "Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?" Her size varies continuously, so much so that when the caterpillar asks her the famous question (the question of every person who faces esoteric work), "Who are you?," she is forced to answer that she doesn't know, because she has changed so many times since this morning. A sincere observation, worthy of a Fourth Way student.

The tools in this new world are not useful. Croquet mallets are flamingos; they have their own inclinations and flap around, refusing to serve her. The whole magical world of Wonderland refuses to serve her. Not even the nursery rhymes unfold as they should, that is, as they have been learned, but take on a life of their own, as in a dream, and speak of something entirely different. This uncooperative reality is much more truthful than the precepts taught to her by parents and educators. Don't we act like Alice when we think of “using” psychological characteristics, those of others or even our own, as if we could choose? And then, don't human machines twist themselves like flamingos, doing what we didn't expect, to our surprise or despair?

Yet Alice, like us, continues desperately to believe in her precepts. When a pigeon calls her "Serpent!,” she's outraged. She's a good little girl, not a serpent. But don’t you eat eggs?, asks the pigeon. And she lets it slip that yes, she eats them, that little girls eat eggs just as snakes do, trying to maintain through buffers her imaginary picture of herself, ignoring the harsh law that says that every creature feeds on other creatures, and is therefore, in relation to them, a “serpent.” "I wouldn't eat yours, I don't like them raw," concludes Alice, in her final attempt to save face before the pigeon and herself.

References to death—to the inexorable laws of world six—are many and extremely raw, though masked with humor. In the exhilarating lobster quadrille, the absurd dance involves snails being thrown into the sea, far away. Sadly, says the song, "The farther off from England the nearer is to France.” And at this the snails turn pale (because they know that, on French soil, they are a delicacy).

Alice is courageous as well. Her logic contains a genuine desire to understand, not just to defend herself. She sincerely tries to understand the Cheshire Cat, who explains to her that, without an aim, she is at the mercy of the law of accident: "If you don't know where you're going, it doesn’t matter what direction you take." And, in the end, she wakes up, while she is on trial, accused by the Queen of Hearts.

Finally, she can say, to all the absurd creatures, "You're nothing but a deck of cards!" This phrase contains the understanding that sets her free and ends the nightmare. It is the feeling we get when we wake up from a dream and go from the first state to the second—or from the second to the third.

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Image: John Tenniel, “Illustration for Alice in Wonderland,” 1865