Hookah

[Dekalb_Blues]

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[font=Times New Roman]'.... Oh dear! [said Alice to herself] I'd nearly for­got­ten that I've got to grow up again! Let me see — how is it to be man­aged? I sup­pose I ought to eat or drink some­thing or other; but the great ques­tion is, what?'[/font]
       The great ques­tion cer­tainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flow­ers and the blades of grass, but she did not see any­thing that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the cir­cum­stances. There was a large mush­room grow­ing near her, about the same height as her­self; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and be­hind it, it oc­curred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.
       She stretched her­self up on tip­toe, and peeped over the edge of the mush­room, and her eyes im­me­di­ately met those of a large cater­pil­lar, that was sit­ting on the top with its arms folded, qui­etly smok­ing a long hookah, and tak­ing not the small­est no­tice of her or of any­thing else.

[font=Times New Roman][font=Times New Roman][font=Times New Roman]       The Cater­pil­lar and Alice looked at each other for some time in si­lence: at last the Cater­pil­lar took the hookah out of its mouth, and ad­dressed her in a lan­guid, sleepy voice.
       'Who are you?' said the Cater­pil­lar.[/font]
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[font=Times New Roman]       This was not an en­cour­ag­ing open­ing for a con­ver­sa­tion. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I— I hardly know, sir, just at pre­sent — at least I know who I was when I got up this morn­ing, but I think I must have been changed sev­eral times since then.'[/font]
       'What do you mean by that?' said the Cater­pil­lar sternly. 'Ex­plain your­self!'
       'I can't ex­plain my­self, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'be­cause I'm not my­self, you see.'
       'I don't see,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very po­litely, 'for I can't un­der­stand it my­self to begin with; and being so many dif­fer­ent sizes in a day is very con­fus­ing.'
       'It isn't,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Well, per­haps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; 'but when you have to turn into a chrysalis — you will some day, you know — and then after that into a but­ter­fly, I should think you'll feel it a lit­tle queer, won't you?'
       'Not a bit,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
[font=Times New Roman]       'Well, per­haps your feel­ings may be dif­fer­ent,' said Alice; 'all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.'[/font]
       You!' said the Cater­pil­lar con­temp­tu­ously. 'Who are you?'
       Which brought them back again to the be­gin­ning of the con­ver­sa­tion. Alice felt a lit­tle ir­ri­tated at the Cater­pil­lar's mak­ing such very short re­marks, and she drew her­self up and said, very gravely, 'I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.'
       'Why?' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Here was an­other puz­zling ques­tion; and as Alice could not think of any good rea­son, and as the Cater­pil­lar seemed to be in a very un­pleas­ant state of mind, she turned away.
       'Come back!' the Cater­pil­lar called after her. 'I've some­thing im­por­tant to say!'
       This sounded promis­ing, cer­tainly: Alice turned and came back again.
       'Keep your tem­per,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Is that all?' said Alice, swal­low­ing down her anger as well as she could.
       'No,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had noth­ing else to do, and per­haps after all it might tell her some­thing worth hear­ing. For some min­utes it puffed away with­out speak­ing, but at last it un­folded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, 'So you think you're changed, do you?'
       'I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice; 'I can't re­mem­ber things as I used — and I don't keep the same size for ten min­utes to­gether!'

       .... and there was si­lence for some min­utes.
       The Cater­pil­lar was the first to speak.
       'What size do you want to be?' it asked.
       'Oh, I'm not par­tic­u­lar as to size,' Alice hastily replied; 'only one doesn't like chang­ing so often, you know.'
       'I don't know,' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       Alice said noth­ing: she had never been so much con­tra­dicted in her life be­fore, and she felt that she was los­ing her tem­per.
       'Are you con­tent now?' said the Cater­pil­lar.
       'Well, I should like to be a lit­tle larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind,' said Alice: 'three inches is such a wretched height to be.'
       'It is a very good height in­deed!' said the Cater­pil­lar an­grily, rear­ing it­self up­right as it spoke (it was ex­actly three inches high).
       'But I'm not used to it!' pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of her­self, 'I wish the crea­tures wouldn't be so eas­ily of­fended!'
       'You'll get used to it in time,' said the Cater­pil­lar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smok­ing again.
       This time Alice waited pa­tiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Cater­pil­lar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook it­self. Then it got down off the mush­room, and crawled away in the grass, merely re­mark­ing as it went, 'One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.'
       'One side of what? The other side of what?' thought Alice to her­self.
       'Of the mush­room,' said the Cater­pil­lar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in an­other mo­ment it was out of sight.
       Alice re­mained look­ing thought­fully at the mush­room for a minute, try­ing to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was per­fectly round, she found this a very dif­fi­cult ques­tion. How­ever, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
       'And now which is which?' she said to her­self, and nib­bled a lit­tle of the right–hand bit to try the ef­fect: the next mo­ment she felt a vi­o­lent blow un­der­neath her chin: it had struck her foot!
       She was a good deal fright­ened by this very sud­den change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrink­ing rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and man­aged to swal­low a morsel of the left­hand bit.

[font=Times New Roman]       'Come, my head's free at last!' said Alice in a tone of de­light, which changed into alarm in an­other mo­ment, when she found that her shoul­ders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an im­mense length of neck....[/font]



The Caterpillar... assumes the dominant role in the verbal exchange that occurs between girl and insect. For the first time, Alice doubts her identity and shows that the continuous reversals — especially the dramatic alterations in her size — of Wonderland have altered her conception of reality as primarily predictable. The Caterpillar begins the conversation with a rude question that Alice answers politely (again inverting the relationship between decorum and indecorum, since previously the Dormouse [at the tea party] was polite while Alice was rude):

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I — I hardly know, Sir, at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then."
"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar, sternly. "Explain yourself!"
"I ca'n't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."
"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.
"I'm afraid I ca'n't put it more clearly," Alice replied, very politely, "For I ca'n't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing."
[from Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, Chapter 5.]

With the pun on "yourself" as meaning both "your actions" and "your self," Carroll demonstrates the impossibility of correctly answering the commonly used command "Explain yourself." Adults often behave like the caterpillar since they unremittingly demand children to answer questions to which the young people cannot know the answer. Here, Alice begins to understand the troubles that shroud self-explanation in a world that denies a static conception of self. Carroll here points to one of the key tenets of fantasy-writing — that it investigates the problems of individual thinking — according to Eric Rabkin:

"What is known is known, and there is no use worrying about it. One can accept it, reject it,
work to change it, or try to ignore it, but what is, is. The true field of freedom is in consideration
of what is not, what might be, what we think. What we think and how we think ... are inevitably
crypto-subjects of fantasy, even when the overt subjects may be quite different. [14-15]"

[font=Arial]Alice faces a full disintegration of her aboveground way of thinking, since she does not even know "what is known" in Wonderland: it is fully a "field of freedom," one that often degrades into chaos.[/font]
[font=Arial][complete [/font][font=Arial]essay: ""Which way? Which way?": The Fantastical Inversions of Alice in Wonderland"]  [/font]