入圍
姓  名 林鼎益 學  校 國立科學工業園區實驗高級中學 年  級 二 年 三 班

 

 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Everyone knows the story of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, and most people knew it through bedtime stories and movies. They would likely summarize it as “a little girl’s venture through a world of nonsense and craziness, where animals talk and cards play croquet,” which is very true indeed. In fact, Lewis Carroll told the story to the three Liddle sisters, who begged for a story filled with nonsense, and so became the tale of Alice, the second eldest of the Liddle sisters, and her crazy adventure down the rabbit hole.

For years, I knew “the Wonderland” simply as a magical kingdom where normal rules don’t apply, principles don’t matter, and everything is possible; I have yet to catch a glimpse of what Lewis Carroll has to offer, and from what I have learned, they hide between the lines. One of the famous aspects is the puns. In chapter ten, the Mock Turtle said to Alice, “Why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should say ‘With what porpoise?’ ”, which Alice answered with “Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” But this is nothing compared to all the word games Carroll played. In chapter nine, the Mock Turtle said he learned “Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,” which derived from Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division; if it wasn’t for the extra information, I would never know “Laughing and Grief” is the Wonderland version of “Latin and Greek”. Yet, these are just a tip of an iceberg and one of reasons why I like this book.

As I was reading, I came to a point where the nonsense and trivia had made me dizzy, and I start to ask the fundamental question for practically all books: What is the purpose? What is behind all the madness? What is Carroll trying to say? Or is there? Just then, as if answering my question, the Duchess said, “Tut, tut, child! Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” So I waited till the end, when Alice woke up from her craziest dream and started telling her sister about everything. After Alice left, her sister sat there and started daydreaming, too. She dreamed about her little sister, the White Rabbit, the March Hare, the Hatter, the Queen, but soon found out they were merely echoes of reality. Then she imagined how her little sister Alice would be a grown woman with the same simple and loving heart of her childhood, telling stories to her children, remembering all the happy days. The Cheshire-Cat once said, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” Maybe we are mad, for we live in a mad world, madder than a hatter. We are never satisfied with what we have, and we long for more. In the end, if we could enjoy the simple things, we would be laughing instead of grieving. Perhaps this isn’t a in-depth book about literature, logic, or philosophy, simply a story read to three little girls, with a simple truth laughing in the face of the real world.