Alice and Drugs

So I spend a few hours looking at Alice on the internet.  The most difficult part of this is the fact that very few sites acknowledge the fact that Carroll wrote the book in Victorian England and not in 60's America.  One of the most infuriating things that I hear when I bring up Alice is that it is an "LSD trip."  Ugh!  It's one of those moments where I wish the violence of cartoons was real and I could wop someone with a sledgehammer.  Anyone who has watched "Hooked: A History of Illegal Drugs" on the History Channel (and come on, who hasn't?)  knows that LSD is a laboratory created drug made by psychiatrists in the 1930's, long after Carroll's boat ride with the Liddell sisters.  If Carroll was using any drugs, and it looks like he was not, it would be the drug du jur: opium.

Along the lines of ascribing drug references where they don't exist, check this out.  While it is likely that some of the differences between Alice the book and Alice the Disney movie can be connected with the drug culture of the time, there are few drug references in the original text.  I do think that anyone who ignores the hookah smoking caterpillar as a not-so-subtle connection to opium is delusional.  Although, I don't think that it is supposed to be a pro-drug reference, just a connection that reflects the social usage of the drug during the time period.  For these two reasons, I want to blow up the website previously linked.

The website also describes the fading in and out of the Cheshire Cat as a representation of the fading in and out of Alice's conciousness while she is "tripping".  Now we're pushing it.

It is important to remember that Alice is a FAIRY TALE!!!  She is traveling through a wonderland and experiencing things that are characatures of real people or experiences.  These stories focus on the belief in the unknown, and trusting in that unknown to resolve all problems.  Alice, though she does cry at the beginning, sets aside her fear and enjoys the journey into Wonderland.  This belief is another way to describe a concept that we tend to forget as adults:  faith.  This lack of faith, or even a clear understanding of how it works, causes us to be jaded and look for other explanations for the story.

This is the cause for the re-tellings of several wonderful fairy tales, like the sexually experimental Little Red Riding Hood, and destroys the true innocence of these tales.  This drug obsessed reading of Alice is just another example of this and distracts from the true meaning of the story:  to explore the unknown with an open heart and to remember that innocence throughout our lives.

Another quick thought:  have either of you read the book Jurassic Park?  When teaching the book in Onalaska, I read some analysis that compared it to Alice and there is quite the connection when you start to break it down.  Just a thought for another discussion point but I wanted to see how close we were to the same page.