Made in Collaboration with:

Ruben Castillo Martinez, Crowson Roosa, and Joseph Vanstory

Preface

You awake on the ground. You are confused and do not know where you are. There are all sorts of trees all around you, some bright green, other dull brown, plenty of foliage all around. In Lewis Carrol’s Wonderland, you wake up to see a white rabbit “waistcoat-pocket” and a “watch to take out of it” (ch.1). You decide to ignore it and move on. Eventually, you stumble across a massive house. In “The Adventures of Tweedle Dum in Wonderland” by Ruben Castillo-Martinez, Landon Childres, Crowson Roosa, and Joe Vanstory, you will solve this mystery. Why are you here? What brought you here? You walk forward to find out.

The Adventures of Tweedle Dum in Wonderland

You venture to the very vibrant forest and eventually, you stumble across a massive house. You enter the massive house aligned with only the finest bright red roses in the shape of hearts and decorated with the most magnificent furnishings to find a man wearing a bright gold with hearts embedded into the crown. The man introduces himself as the King of Hearts and that he is here to give you your mission. The King informs you that you are Tweedle Dum, and you need to save your brother and The Mad Hatter who is in Wonderland captured by the villainous Queen of Hearts. You ask the King how you are supposed to save them. The King of Hearts informs you that the only way to free your brother is to kill The Queen of Hearts and save The Mad Hatter. You ask the King how you are supposed to do that. The only thing the King tells you before he runs away is to find the hookah-smoking caterpillar and that you must never let the Queen of Hearts know what you are doing or you will be banished from this world. As you see the King run away through the window, you burst out of the house door, and then you chase after the King. As you are running you neglect your surroundings and end up falling into a ditch. As you get up and dust yourself off, you notice a white rabbit in a waist-coat staring at you. 

To your surprise, the rabbit asks if you are okay. You reply that you are fine and that you need to continue chasing the King of Hearts. The rabbit replies by saying that there is no need and that he knows where you need to go. The rabbit darts off, leaving you in the ditch all alone. You decide to chase after the rabbit, this time being more careful of your surroundings. To your surprise, you are rapidly approaching the rabbit discovering you are abnormally fast. You chase the rabbit for what seems like an eternity, but eventually, you come upon a forest filled with bright green trees, vibrant colorful flowers and there you see a giant dark figure sitting atop a dull brown mushroom surrounded by a cloud of smoke. As you stop and catch your breath, you notice that you cannot find the rabbit anywhere. You decide to forget the rabbit and give in to your curiosity. When you begin to approach the figure you see it’s a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah and it introduces itself as Absolem. It talks in a booming, thunderous voice saying that the Queen is in Wonderland hunting you down. Hearing The Queen’s name, a shiver goes down your spine. Absolem notices your fear and tells you to not be afraid because there is a way to defeat her and save your brother and The Mad Hatter. Absolem tells you that you must make a poison to kill the Queen of Hearts and split up the royal family. After that, Absolem disappeared into a cloud of smoke leaving only a book in its place. You pick up the book and open it to find that it has nothing but a list of ingredients with pictures. There are only three ingredients listed in the book: a scoop of vibrant orange marmalade, one brown dull mushroom, and the hair of a brown Cheshire Cat. 

As you are looking at the book for more clues, you hear someone humming. You follow that sound and find a little girl humming. You walk up to her and see something familiar in her hand. As you get closer, you know for sure, it is the unmistakably vibrant orange marmalade from the book of ingredients. The little girl sees you looking at her orange marmalade and clinches it tighter. The little girl says that her name is Alice and she demands to know your name. You tell her that your name is Tweedle Dum and that you need her orange marmalade. She tells you that she will only give it to you if you tell her why. You reluctantly decide to tell her the whole story of why you are there and that you need to make a poison. Alice supports your brave adventure and decides to give you the orange marmalade on the condition that she gets to go with you on your adventure. You tell her no and that it’s too dangerous for her. She says that she is the only one that knows where to find the ingredients and that you need her help. You reluctantly decide to accept her help. With Alice’s help, you find the mushroom in a remote part of the forest where many wild beasts roam. You and Alice then spend many days tracking down the Cheshire Cat, so that you are able to obtain a strand of its hair. After three straight days, you decide to set a trap and lure the Cheshire Cat in. Since you only need a strand of its hair, you have Alice lure it in and when it goes into the right spot you release a trap that swings a sharp stick at the cat and cuts off some of its hair. After you find all of the ingredients, you realize that you need to find the caterpillar so that you can make the poison. As you set out to look for someone to help you, you figure out that you have been followed all this time. Behind you, you hear thunderous footsteps and you turn around and see the Queen. An unimaginable fear creeps up inside you, and you are unable to keep yourself from throwing yourself into a fetal position and covering your eyes. As you are covering your eyes, you feel someone coming towards you, the fear is getting greater. You feel someone right next to you, you can hear their breath and just when you feel like you can’t take any more fear, you feel a hand on your shoulder. You open your eyes, confused as to what is going on, you’re in a straight jacket in a white empty void, your eyes gaze upon a kind-looking doctor who is holding you, trying to stop your fear. You see his nametag, it says Dr. Hatter, then laying beside you, you see a cat with a collar that says, “Hearts”. Then you hear strange noises and look across the room to see a TV playing Alice in Wonderland on channel 9, with the psych wards basic cable television. After you calm down, Dr. Hatter says, “it’s all alright, you just need to take your medicine.” You were banished from the world. Do You Want To Start Again?

Works CitedCarroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865. Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm. Accessed 27 April 2020

Almost all works of art and literature are based on or at least inspired by other works of art and literature.  This is especially common in the romantic period of literature. One example is how Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” compares to the old folk song “The Daemon-lover”. While many of the themes in the works are similar, such as the theme, there are some things that are vastly different.

“The Daemon-Lover” is a song about a woman who is waiting for her husband, who is a sailor, to return from his long voyage.  Her husband finally returns and convinces the woman to sail away with him. Once they are out at sea, the husband reveals that he is actually a daemon, who is making the trip torturous.  This compares to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a tale about a man warning someone about a mistake he made in his life.  He tells a story about him as a young man, going on a voyage. He explains how when at sea, he shot an albatross, which is a bad omen, leading to the death of the entire crew and destruction of the ship.  Both of the stories have a type of supernatural element to them.

“The Daemon-lover” and ”The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are similar in a variety of ways.  You can clearly see how Coleridge was inspired by “The Daemon-Lover”. Both of the stories have the majority of the plot take place at sea.  This matches the dark and eerie theme of the two stories. An example of this is when “The Daemon-Lover” says “The clouds grew dark, and the wind grew loud, / And levin° fill’d her e’e / And waesome wail’d the snaw-white sprites / Upon the gurlie° sea” (Lines 69-72).  Furthermore, the daemon converses with the woman before revealing that he is actually a daemon and plans to take the woman’s soul. He turns the sea and sky into a dark bottomless pit, which is what many people view the ocean as.  This is built on when the song says, “Upon the slimy sea / About, about, in reel and rout / The death-fires danced at night; / The water, like a witch’s oil, / Burnt green, and blue, and white” (Lines 126-130). Coleridge uses imagery in the lyrics to depict the ocean as this dark colored abyss and the sky as this haunting entity.  Coleridge more than takes his fair amount of inspiration from “The Daemon-Lover”.

Though they are very similar, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Daemon-Lover” have their fair share of differences.  The message of two stories is one of the biggest differences. “The Daemon-Lover” teaches about how you shouldn’t dive head first into the unknown, while “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” teaches about teaching others from your own mistakes in life so they don’t repeat them.  In “The Daemon-Lover”, the woman makes a grave mistake by going out to sea without thinking it through. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, the mariner is telling a wedding guest about the mistake he made of killing the albatross, and how it caused the catastrophe that killed the rest of the crew and destroyed the entire ship, leaving only him.  These stories are very similar, but they were written with different meanings to them.

Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The Norton Anthology of British Literature: The Romantic Period. 10th ed. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. W. W. Norton, 2017. pp. 448-64.

“The Daemon-lover.” The Norton Anthology of British Literature: The Romantic Period. 10th ed. Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. W. W. Norton, 2017. pp. 37-39.

The Nightmare is a painting by Henry Fuseli from the late eighteenth century. We can assume that the purpose of the painting is to put a fear and pain that Fuseli was feeling in an artistic form. The painting has a nice contrast of black and white. The painting correlates with Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, almost to well. The intro to Frankenstein explains how almost everyone that Shelley loved died. Her mother died in childbirth, her sister commited suicide, and her husband died after their only surviving son was born. She was surrounded by death. The main part of the painting is a dead woman. All the death in her life must have made her feel like she was living in darkness. In the painting, aside from the woman and horse, the painting is completely dark.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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