Throughout April I’m taking part in the Blogging from A-Z Challenge. I’ll be posting every day (except Sundays) on my chosen theme of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
For the letter I, I’m discussing the theme of ‘Imagination and the Impossible’ in Caroll’s works.
When Alice falls asleep and dreams of Wonderland, she enters a world of her own imagination, in which she discovers that very few things are impossible.
Quotes
For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
***
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Symbolism
At the beginning of her adventures, Alice views the world as something ordered and meaningful. She’s a smart child and has learnt lots of rules about logic, maths and social etiquette. However, when she enters Wonderland, everything that she knows is turned on its head. She encounters various bizarre and impossible things such as talking animals, vanishing cats and cakes that cause her to grow in size. She begins to accept that her previous worldview was limited and that things she thought of as impossible can actually exist, at least in Wonderland.
Of course, as I discussed in my post about dreams, Wonderland is a fantasy world conjured up by Alice’s subconscious. Carroll links imagination with the innocence of childhood and the message seems to be that we should all try to keep in touch with our inner child throughout our life.
Alice’s adventures encourage us to use our imaginations to think beyond the ‘impossible’. Believing in impossible things causes us to think outside the box and leads to inspiring and innovative ideas (more “I” words!). After all, things that were once thought impossible (like travelling to the moon), have now been proved possible by scientists and great thinkers who dared to believe in what others dismissed as madness. A great quote from Walt Disney springs to mind: “Impossibility is only the figment of an insufficient imagination”.
Before you go…
Have you ever believed in something that others thought of as impossible? Do you think it’s important to preserve our imagination into adulthood?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” One of my favourite quotes 🙂
I love that quote too!
I think we have to believe the impossible sometimes – faith has a lot to do with believing in what the eye can’t see. I also think imagination and wonder are very special things to share with a child – and it keeps it fresh as an adult too.
Leanne | http://www.crestingthehill.com.au
I for If Opportunity….
Yes! And sometimes what we think is impossible turns out to be the exact opposite. I agree that it’s important to encourage children to use their imagination.
I think it is very important to preserve imagination into adulthood. It’s such a freeing thing. We should all try and believe a few impossible things, although I think six before breakfast might be pushing it 🙂
Tasha
https://tashasthinkings.blogspot.com/ – Movie Monsters
Yes, imagination can be a great tool in adulthood-not just for creative hobbies, but also for helping us visualise our goals and think of solutions to problems.
I think preserving the child in us into our adult life is what saves our sanity of mind. The child helps us seeing things which are useless but important, unelikely but possible, superfluous but pleasant. It is even possible that we can’t be adult if we are not child at the same time.
That’s such a great point. I think we need our imagination to help us think outside the box and to allow us to ‘escape’ from mundane things from time to time. Life without daydreams and belief in the impossible sounds very dull.
When I first read Alice, I actually didn’t know she was dreaming 🙂 by the end of the book I guessed she was, because the feel was SO accurate to that of dreams 😀 I was surprised I was right. I really did enjoy Alice’s stories, both the symbolism and just the pure imagination 🙂
Great post. I loved Lewis Carroll and Alice’s trips both to Wonderland and through the looking glass. As a writer, imagination is critical, but sometimes what I see in my head and what I can put down for others to see is hard. Carroll did it so well. Incidentally, the poem The Jabberwaky was used on Chicago med this week!
Susanne from Living the Dream