Chapter 10, in which Alice spends time with a morose Mock Turtle and a giddy Gryphon brings to mind the three little girls to whom this story was originally told. I can just picture the girls giggling madly at the silly songs and the tale of seals, turtles and salmon waltzing with lobsters before flinging the crustaceans out to sea.
Beyond the silliness, Carroll attempts to share some wisdom with his young audience when the Mock Turtle says, “Why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going on a journey, I should say ‘With what porpoise?’ “
It’s impossible to know if Carroll’s clever lines we part of the original storytelling or were added when he wrote the tale down later. But I wonder if he was questioning his own “porpoise” in creating Alice,Wonderland and the cast of characters who she meets down the rabbit hole. Like every first-time author he must have been asking himself, “Am I wasting my time? Is my writing trash or treasure? Will my story ever find an audience beyond those three little girls?” Thankfully Carroll pushed through his doubts, put pen to paper, wrote Alice’s story down, shared her with a publisher and was eventually published. Every writers dream!
