In my spare time, I turned out "Alice in Wonderland", re-read this book, and still feel a lot of emotions. Although defined as a fairy tale, the book has a large adult readership.
In it, we can find wonderful characters and bizarre plots, corresponding to every experience in the real world, even mathematicians, linguists, philosophers and other people in different fields of study can find their share in it, it can be said that Alice's rabbit hole is an endless treasure trove.
Simply put, the book tells the story of a girl named Alice who enters a magical country from the rabbit hole, encounters many talking creatures and people-like cards, and finally discovers that everything is just a dream. Since its publication in 1865, it has been translated into more than a hundred and twenty languages, reprinted hundreds of times, and circulated to a degree comparable to the Bible and shakespeare's works.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > even if life is too cruel, it still does not forget its original intention</h1>
At the beginning of the story, Alice is idle by the river, when she suddenly sees a self-talking rabbit running over, still holding a pocket watch. As the saying goes, curiosity kills a cat. So, with this curiosity, Alice followed the rabbit into the hole, which was so deep that she fell for a long time before reaching the bottom of the hole.
She chased the rabbit all the way to a long, low hall and found a key to a small door in the garden, but the door was too small for her to enter. At this time, she saw a bottle of drink that said "drink me", and once again drank it driven by curiosity, and her body shrank smoothly.
Fate seemed to have been joking with Alice, she dropped the key on the tall table, simply did not stop, went to eat the cake that said "eat me", did not expect that the body was so big that even the head was up to the ceiling.
Alice burst into tears, during which time she became smaller again after getting a fan and had to swim in her own pool of tears.
Later, Alice came to the rabbit's house, became bigger by eating a biscuit, frightened the onlookers, and became smaller by eating the cake made of pebbles when she was besieged by these animals, and finally escaped from the rabbit's house.
This was originally Alice's first adventure, and similar experiences of getting bigger and smaller happened from time to time. And this strange function sometimes brings Alice some convenience, and sometimes it brings her a lot of trouble.
You may think that the author is a very childlike, very imaginative person. In fact, this strange function comes from a life experienced first-hand.
In Alice's world, in addition to adding the fantasy effect in the story, there is another layer of moral, that is, in this changeable world, we can only continue to change ourselves with the secular society and the complex human heart, if we do not change, we will be in danger, not at peace, but we betray our hearts to change, and in the end we are not sure who we really are.
In fact, there is a disease called "microvision" in medicine, which affects human visual perception. This symptom is reflected in the fact that when the patient observes a thing for a long time, the surrounding things will suddenly become larger, or suddenly become smaller, and sometimes there will be a sense of distortion in time and space.
In the real world, children sometimes do want to grow up right away, and sometimes they want to never grow up.
And the adults? Their views and expectations of children also change repeatedly, for example, one minute adults still use "you have grown up" as an excuse to no longer allow children to spoil, but the next second because "you are still young" to require children to obey.
This kind of big talent has authority, the rule that children can only obediently obey does not only occur in the parent-child relationship, but also in all aspects of life, the workplace and other aspects, some people hold the authority on the top, there is no reason and rules to speak of to other people to drink, so that all life is tired. So when Alice in the story encounters a caterpillar who smokes a hookah and is told that eating mushrooms can control the size, people are relieved, as if they see their own hope.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > can't stop the desire in your heart even if you're restless</h1>
Later in the story, Alice enters a small manor, and after hearing the conversation between the fish servant and the frog servant, she learns that this is the duchess's home. The baby began to cry, and the grumpy Duchess was helpless and left the baby in Alice's care. Unable to refuse, she carried the baby away, only to suddenly find that the baby had turned into a pig.
Later, Alice, through the instructions of the Cheshire cat, goes to the home of the March Rabbit and finds that the Mad Hatter, the March Rabbit, and the Sleeping Mouse are holding a tea party. The Mad Hatter reveals to her that because he accidentally offended time, he was punished by time for staying forever at the time of afternoon tea, and the three of them had to eat refreshments all day, constantly telling puzzles and stories.
In this adventure, you may feel very nonsensical, the baby turns into a pig for no reason, and the time travels back and forth in the afternoon of drinking tea, in fact, the source of these unreasonable things is the author Carol's mathematical cognition.
For example, in the plot of a baby turning into a pig, Carol parodies the continuity principle of projective geometry. It is about the idea of inserting a glass plate between the eye and a circle so that the circle can be projected onto the glass plate, then as long as the position of the glass plate is changed, the projection on the glass plate can be continuously changed from a circle to an ellipse, a parabola, a hyperbolic curve, and so on. If the author thinks it works for abstract circles, it works for living babies as well. So when Alice took the Duchess's little child out, he turned into a pig.
The passage of time repeating is to add a "time" dimension to the three-dimensional space. The author believes that "time" here is too innocent, it is not the same thing as space at all. So arrange time still in the story, leaving the Mad Hatter, The March Rabbit, and the Sleeping Mouse trapped in time, who have no time to wash their teacups and can only circle around the table, moving from one seat to another, telling one boring story after another.
These situations are very similar to us in real life, in the long river of time, we can not control and change the trajectory of fate, no matter how the disaster and encounter are projected, all we can do is to accept it hard, you shout or cry, and finally you have to obediently return to your seat and sit down, waiting for the baptism of the predicament.
Time goes back and forth, life is as it was before, before reaching the other shore of victory, each of us can only let the storm beat, disappointed again and again, helpless again and again, but still standing firm again and again, only hope that this time passed, we can see the dawn.
Later, Alice leaves the tea party and goes to a garden, surprised to find that it is a world ruled by cards.
Red Heart K is the king, Red Heart Q is the queen, and there are many card servants. They lined up into the garden to watch a croquet match, in which Mr. White Rabbit, the Duchess, cheshire cats, and a variety of animals all came. The Queen of Hearts had a rough temper and shouted, "Cut off his head for me!" ”
Alice accepted the invitation to the croquet match on the queen's orders, but found that the game was completely irregular and chaotic. They used live flamingos as clubs and hedgehogs as balls.
Before the game was over, the sound of the trial beginning was heard in the distance, and it turned out that someone had accused the Red Heart Knight of stealing the Red Heart Queen's pie. The whole trial process was absurd, even more exaggerated and outrageous than the goalball game.
The cards demanded alice to be a witness, and Alice's body grew larger, and when she testified, the king and queen invoked national law to ask Alice, who had become larger, to withdraw from the courtroom, which she refused.
In the end, the queen had to order Alice's head to be cut off, but Alice was not afraid, because she realized that these were just cards.
Just as Alice was about to resist, she woke up, and it turned out that everything was just a dream, and the story ended here.
In this final journey, the author depicts an extremely absurd society, whether it is false etiquette or a chaotic legal system, which is unconvincing and unacceptable. The careful card servants Alice sees, the snobbish duchess, and the moody Queen of Hearts are all archetypes of some of the people we often see in our lives.
Alice, although involuntarily, was forced to participate in the competition but still testified in court, which also reflected the hearts of most people. They want to survive in a hypocritical and unsentimental social environment, only to pretend to obey and abide by these unreasonable requirements, but people's hearts are always good, the pursuit of equal life and freedom, and never give up expectations and waiting.
From the initial inequality to the good intention to find opportunities, to precipitate their own hearts, waiting for the opportunity to resist, and finally erupt in silence, summon up courage and faith, and strive for their own beautiful future - the whole story is our yearning for the final return of life, the author lets us see the extraordinary heart in our hearts, even if restless, it will not deviate from the original track.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > doesn't set limits on life and makes the impossible possible</h1>
Over the years, some researchers have figured out a lot of scientific knowledge to interpret the plot of the story:
For example, there is a "poisonous fly Amanita fungus", which, after eating, does produce illusions, illusions about time and the size of objects
Hatters use mercury when handling fur, and long-term exposure to mercury can lead to mental abnormalities
Rabbits tend to be in heat in March and behave strangely,
Therefore, the hatter who drinks tea and the March rabbit become two crazy characters in the story.
In addition to the magical characters and plot setting, what appealed to me most about this story was the enigmatic language. It is this style of language that makes Alice in Wonderland a very mysterious story, and no matter how people interpret it, they can't exhaust it.
Zhou Zuoren commented that Alice was "meaningful" and "meaningless", the so-called "meaningful" refers to its profound content, and "meaningless" refers to some of its language, contrary to common sense, seemingly meaningless words, but do not express any meaning.
For example, the mad hatter's words are headless and brainless, and Alice is confused. So she said, "I don't quite understand what you mean." At this time the mad hatter replied, "The sleeping mouse is asleep again." Then he poured some hot tea on the sleeping mouse's nose, and the sleeping mouse shook his head impatiently, closed his eyes, and said, "Yes, I want to say the same thing." "If he's asleep, how can he be trying to say he's asleep?"
The author always jokes about contradictions, and his jokes can at least liberate people from the limitations of logic and common sense for a while, so that we can find that the original words can still be said!
When Alice saw the short fat man, she asked, "Why are you sitting here alone?" The short fat man replied unkindly, "Why?" Because no one is with me! Do you think that's a problem? It's almost like asking, "Why are the chicks crossing the street?" When he replied, "Because it's going to the other side of the road." ”
Logically, both answers are impeccable, but in everyday communication, neither of them really answers the question. The latter Q&A sometimes makes people laugh, because people's attention is drawn to the form of the question and the answer rather than the meaning, and the contrast between the correct logic and the absurd answer constitutes humor.
In Alice's world, there are things everywhere that are impossible in reality—there are two kinds of impossible things, logical impossibilities and de facto impossibilities. The logically impossible refers to things that contradict our thinking, such as the triangle of a circle, that one can write five words without ever imagining how the shape it describes exists.
The British writer Chesterton once said: You can't imagine that two plus one is not equal to three, but it is easy to imagine trees with golden candles that do not bear fruit, or have tigers hanging upside down on these trees with their tails.
This is the most valuable thing about Alice's story, which breaks the iron law of the everyday and does not take for granted what is commonly seen. From another aspect, it also hits people's hearts, everything is full of possibilities, there is no absolute can and can not, as long as our thoughts are not imprisoned, it is possible to reach the field of their own thoughts, no sense of boundaries, do not have to deny the ideas in the mind, sometimes let themselves be satisfied, sometimes make themselves happy, do not set limits on life, always tearful, always full of passion.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > not waste this life, you have to be consistent</h1>
A scholar went to the United States to attend a seminar on the philosophy of language, and the moderator listed four must-read books, including Alice in Wonderland and a copy of Wittgenstein's Studies in Language, which is a very difficult philosophy book. The two books can go hand in hand, and you can imagine the status of the book "Alice in Wonderland".
There are so many points that Alice in Wonderland can be deciphered, and if you cover all aspects, you can't finish writing a few books. People's interest in this work drives them to constantly peek into the profound meaning behind the work, and in the future, it will certainly bring more inspiration and inspiration to people.
In 1984, Prince Charles and Princess Diana set up a life-size Mad Tea Party statue in Warrington, near Carol's birthplace. If you're traveling to the UK, you might as well check it out there. In the face of the crazy hatter and the rabbit, you may be reminded of the golden evening when Carol told Alice the story.
May each of us retain the simple innocence of our hearts, even if we live in the tide of the world, we can be alone.