Chapter One: Down the Rabbit Hole
Part One: Falling
The story is simple, but it represents something far more
complex. We see it simply, and interpret it with complexity.
The little girl Alice is bored and she begins to use her
imagination. She sees a peculiar rabbit, so she begins to chase him, all the
way into a rabbit hole, where she discovers that it seems to be an endless
chasm. She falls in.
Seems simple enough: bored little girl, rabbits, chasing,
falling, endless chasms. We’ve all heard the story for what it is: a story.
For many, it ends there. It’s a story of a little girl using
her imagination.
For me, it’s much deeper than that.
Have you ever fallen into a rabbit hole? I have. And I don’t
mean a metaphorical rabbit hole; I mean a literal rabbit hole. I think I was
about 8 years old. My cousins and I were running around playing behind our
grandparents’ house, on a big hill next to the train tracks. I was chasing my
older cousin when suddenly I found myself flat on my face with a mouthful of
dirt. It took a few seconds, but despite the humor that my cousins found in the
situation, I felt the deep throbbing pain that I could only imagine had to mean
that my entire leg had fallen off. I remember screaming in horror as my cousins
ran away in the distance. That’s it, I thought. I was a goner.
As it turns out, my foot had gotten caught in a rabbit hole
and I tripped. I had hardly even twisted my ankle, but for the rest of the day
I pretended that I was broken.
Maybe it was for the attention. Maybe it was
because I was mad that my cousins (all boys, all older than me) had laughed and
ran away while I was, in my mind, dying. My ankle was iced and elevated the
rest of the day, and we had to watch only movies that I wanted to watch, eat
what I wanted to eat, and essentially be as miserable as I thought I was.
We watched Alice in Wonderland
and Through the Looking Glass, the
2-part film from 1985. It wasn’t until Alice falls down the rabbit hole that I
saw the parallel.
I think that, as trivial as it sounds, was a pivotal point in my life and my
relationship with Alice.
But back to the story.
The details of the story, rather than the plot, are what get me thinking.
Alice is being tutored by her sister, and her attention and
frustration with the material lead her mind to wander. She feels sleepy,
stupid, bored, and irritable. She decides to occupy her mind by picking daisies
and braiding them together. Her mind starts to wander even further when out of
the corner of her eye she spots a rabbit running next to her. The rabbit is
focused intently on the time by glaring at his pocket watch, and is panicking
about being late. At this point Alice first comes to realize that she’s never
seen such a sight. She notices his waistcoat, and recognizing the urgency of
his situation, she drops everything and begins to chase him. Her curiosity
caused her to run so fast, that when the rabbit darted under a hedge and down a
rabbit hole, Alice didn’t hesitate to follow. She fell very slowly.
When Alice’s mood goes from bored, grumpy, and sleepy, to
sudden curiosity with a sense of urgency, I can’t help but recount my own
experiences. It actually gets pretty real. Let’s keep moving.
As she is “falling,” she takes in everything she is seeing.
The hole into which she fell became a chasm; a journey through her own mind. She
noticed that the walls of the chasm were filled with shelves, maps, paintings,
and cupboards. At one point, she sees a jar labeled “Orange Marmalade.” She
picked it up. To her dismay, it was empty, and she wanted to put it back on the
shelf. But the shelf was now ten feet above her. Should she just drop it? But,
if she dropped it, maybe it would kill someone below her. She clutched onto the
jar until she passed another shelf with enough room for her to place it.
Her concern for consequences seems remarkable for a little child, but I can
relate. What if I drop the glass jar of orange marmalade? What if I suddenly,
unintentionally, and almost unnoticeably harm somebody? How likely is it that
there is a person at the bottom of this chasm? How likely is it that the jar
could hit a target that specific? How likely is it that the jar could
accumulate enough velocity to actually kill someone?
Probably not very likely. But it is still possible. And that’s enough to keep
me clutching onto that jar.
‘Well!’ thought Alice to herself, ‘after such a fall as this,
I shall
think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at
home! Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top
of the house!’ (Which was very likely true.)
~Alice
This experience trumps almost every experience Alice has
ever had, and rethinks her reactions to things as trivial as tripping down the
stairs.
As she falls, Alice tries to impress herself with her own knowledge, despite
not knowing what she was even talking about. But she knew which words to use in
many situations, because she had heard them in a similar context before. She
didn’t care if she mixed up ‘longitude’ with ‘latitude’ or if people on the
other side of the world actually did walk upside-down; she was just proud that
she could use such impressive words, even if no one was around to hear them.
The little girl Alice is bored and she begins to use her
imagination. She sees a peculiar rabbit, so she begins to chase him, all the
way into a rabbit hole, where she discovers that it seems to be an endless
chasm. She falls in.
As it turns out, my foot had gotten caught in a rabbit hole
and I tripped. I had hardly even twisted my ankle, but for the rest of the day
I pretended that I was broken.
As she is “falling,” she takes in everything she is seeing.
The hole into which she fell became a chasm; a journey through her own mind. She
noticed that the walls of the chasm were filled with shelves, maps, paintings,
and cupboards. At one point, she sees a jar labeled “Orange Marmalade.” She
picked it up. To her dismay, it was empty, and she wanted to put it back on the
shelf. But the shelf was now ten feet above her. Should she just drop it? But,
if she dropped it, maybe it would kill someone below her. She clutched onto the
jar until she passed another shelf with enough room for her to place it. 