Lewis Carrol Aka Charles Dodgson the less you know the better

  Absolutes were Lewis Carol's money maker

No matter what mathematical logic you apply in analyzing the number of personalities possessed by Charles Dodgson (better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) the sum arrived at is never less than two! I think the marketing to the general public of Dodgson as a drug-user rather than exposing his most obvious character defect (his attraction, exploitation and nude photography of pre-pubescent girls), was the work of someone’s brilliance. Instead of watching “Alice in Wonderland” in horror – knowing this story is being told to an innocent little girl of 11 by a twisted monster, we view it with the idea that we are along for the ride on the author's drug-induced acid trip. We “The Alices” believe what might be witnesssing in the madness of Wonderland is the attempt by Dodgson to process the abuse he himself suffered (possibly as a 14 year old lad while attending the Rugby School where he talked about the "annoyance at night" ). But, as one of our sister’s would say, this might explain the behavior but it certainly does not excuse it! Present day serial murderers, rapists and pedophiles are too well-recognized by the public to be able to market themselves as something other than what they are. For instance, Ted Bundy would not have been able to tell fetching stories to one of his many mail order admirers and then have those tales made into a romantic chick flick! At least, not without a public outcry. Yet, we have the likes of Dodgson, the godly Anglican deacon and college teacher, tormented by feelings of guilt and unworthiness, plagued with a headache disorder named after him (“The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome”), telling a story riddled with confusion, contempt and pain to three little girls, who for some inexplicable reason, beg him to record it into book form. The sad truth is that Alice Liddell, the object of Dodgson’s self-professed “innocent" affection, was too young to discern such things and thus her reality was being honed by a master manipulator. Alice was a captive mind for Dodgson to toy with as he told her stories of a place (Wonderland) brimming with promise but full of chaos and confusion. She is even assigned her own split personality by Dodgson in the 1st Chapter of Alice in Wonderland, as if she needed him to manage her trauma for her. The Dodgson-types of today have to, at the very least, sneak around and at the very worst, kidnap their prey in order to make them their captives. Such was the case for 11-year old Jaycee Dugard, who was kept for 18 years in a backyard shed by a madman. I can promise you this, Jaycee would not ask her captor to write down the stories he told her while she was his prisoner, and there would certainly be no literary accolades given to such a childhood-stealing monster! We believe Lewis Carroll's fame should be viewed through the same looking glass as the monster Jaycee was faced with. It is the job of fanatics like us to bring awareness of these type of paradoxical realities that swirl all around us. If not, how can we even begin to empower all of our society's little Alices that they can expect to experience both good and evil, wonder, adventure and, of course, some pain in a world that is not wholly inhabited by rude and spiteful creatures, and here's a thought...how to tell the difference between safe and unsafe story tellers? I Wonder. The Alices