Analyzing the “Alice Project”

After six weeks of reading and analyzing (or analyzing why we shouldn’t analyze) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the “Alice Project” is finally coming to a close. In approximately 15 hours, we will leave Alice to cope with her dream for herself, without the aid of our blogs. So, I’d like to take some time to reflect on the entirety of the project we have devoted ourselves to for the past six weeks.

I came into this project without any knowledge of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I’ve never seen the Disney movie in its entirety, and the parts that I have seen I remember only vaguely, and so I really did not have much of a clue what to expect when reading the book. Even before we began the project, Mr. Long would make some references to Alice, most often about the Cheshire Cat or the White Rabbit, but I always felt somewhat out of the loop. I actually looked forward to the project if only so that I would be able to understand the various references to the story that are now ever so apparent all over the place!

At the beginning of the story, I remember wondering what the “porpoise” of the countless annotations in the margins of our annotated version of the story was. I kept wondering:

• Why is all of this background information on the author necessary?
• Why do I need to know of all of these other analyses and references to the story?
• Who cares about a dodo?

However, as the project progressed and we delved deeper and deeper into the quirks of Wonderland, I started realizing that that information could actually be very beneficial when writing blogs. Whether it served as an inspiration for a blog, or merely helped support a point I was trying to make, some of the annotations were actually very useful (although I will admit that I still fail to see the purpose of some of them).

One thing I liked about the story was that it was possible to make something out of just about anything, but it was also possible to dispute the actual, if any, meaning of pretty much everything. It was interesting searching the story for possible symbolism or deep meanings, while having the power to argue that there is none should I come up empty-handed. That helped not only with blogging, but with comments as well.

I enjoyed commenting on my classmates’ blogs. Everyone created very high quality material, and it was cool to be able to see the story from everyone else’s perspective. I found great inspiration for blogs of my own in the ideas of those of my peers. I also enjoyed receiving comments, because it is always rewarding to get feedback on my writing and see new perspectives on the rabbits I chased and ideas I touched upon.

As for coming up with ideas for my own blogs, it was probably as painless as it could have possibly been. If I absolutely could not come up with anything to write, I always had the option of reading my classmates’ blogs and trying to find inspiration there. If that didn’t work, there was the option of searching the internet for interesting images, videos, or anything else Alice related that I could respond to.

All in all, I think the “Alice Project” was an imaginative project that challenged everyone in some way and forced us all to be team players. The most challenging aspect of the project was most likely different for everyone, but for me it was probably the extensive amount of time it demanded. We have never done anything like this, so getting accustomed to it took about as much time as actually working on it in the beginning. I was also worried that the project would interfere with my other project or other classes, which it may have to some extent.

That said, I thought the project was a very cool idea with very large possibilities, and I look forward to seeing how far it goes in the future.