Saturday, September 27, 2008

...To talk of other things.

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. I love that poem. Although the actual version from the book Through the Looking Glass, is much more disturbing than the version from the animated movie Alice in Wonderland, which is still among my favorite animated movies.
They say that the Walrus and the Carpenter represent religion and the oysters represent everyone in the world. Obviously, the Carpenter represents Christianity in all of it's forms. And the Walrus represents all eastern religions, Buddha because he's fat (even though that is just a Buddha and not the real Buddha) and Ganesha because of the tusks (he obviously doesn't have six arms like Ganesha but you get the point). It appears to me that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) had some issues with religion. He was actually a deacon in the Angelican Church and at the appointed time to become a priest he requested to remain a deacon, which was against the rules and he could have been expelled. However, they let him stay as a deacon. He often wrote in his journal that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner. So clearly he had some issuse, but who knows what they where. It is all left up to your own speculations.
Then there was the drug contraversy about the book Alice in Wonderland, with the consumption on mushrooms and other "growing" and "shrinking" foods, and of course the hooka smoking caterpillar. This very well could be the result of hallucinogenic drugs. During the Victorian age a lot of these drugs were commonly available from your nearest grocer. It was legal and a lot of them were common pain killers of "the aspirin of the era." Notwithstanding, there is no conclusive evidence that he used those drugs. It's all just the Anti-hippy people's speculations from the 1960's.

You may all wonder why I posted this on the blog. Well there really is no reason, it's 7am on a saturday morning and even though I would like to be sleeping, I can't. I'm getting used to getting up at 4am everyday to go to work at 5am, but I don't have to work on the weekends. And since I can't sleep and Brianne is still sleeping, I figured I'd look at everyone's blogs and then I decided to post myself. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about Lewis Carroll's (only his pen name) writings.


~Joshua

3 comments:

gwen said...

Did you also know he was a great mathematician? H was very much into riddles; and,of course A in W is riddled with them! Very interesting man, and interesting what the mind does when one cannot sleep!

Heather said...

I'm sorry to hear that it's tough to sleep in. If you were closer, I'd invite you over on the weekends to play with Afton at 5:30 a.m. when she wakes up and is just happy to talk, talk, talk (baby style, of course). :)

Debbie said...

I thought it was.."the time has come the walrus said to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. At least that is how I memorized for a children's lit class. Love mom