aybala50 asked in class about the nature of reality pertaining to dreams. If people are real, shouldn't dreams be real too?
"Reality isn't just "out there", like some block of cement: reality is an interpretation. In a sense we co-create our reality. And we do that all the time, every day. One day we wake up and we're in a great mood, the city we live in is a beautiful city, the next day it's an ugly city. That's just the way we interpret things. We're not free necessarily to choose the facts of our life, but there is an element of freedom in how we interpret them."
-Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
The quote sings a similar tune to that of our chatter discussion. Chatter between people helps establish a consensus (or a majority, depending on who we're leaving out) for a basic reality, on shaky grounds though it may be. When our discussion moved to dreams after aybala50's question, a few of us agreed that dreams were a sign from one's mind (conscience or sub-conscience). Taken in this manner, dreams could be interpreted as chatter of the mind, an experiment in determining reality. Another aspect of our minds (that have very much to do with dreams) could be seen this way: the imagination.
In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one may assume that Alice's adventures are a result of Alice's childish (and fantastical) imagination. Our imaginations are our tools for musing over the "what if". When we start interpreting and tearing deeper into the work to search for meaning, we are clashing our imaginations against those of Lewis Carrol and of the character of Alice. As Anne Dalke suggested, Alice in Wonderland can be taken as parodying scholars' attempts at finding deeper meaning within phrases or words. In other words, Lewis Carrol is poking fun at the scholars by showing that their interpretations are formed merely by their imaginations. It's all in their heads, like Wonderland is for Alice.
For Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, interpretation of events are key to the texts. A short example would be the various puns and misunderstandings with the meaning of words. For these numerous circumstances, Alice would interpret a phrase one way while her companion of the moment would take an entirely different approach. The "facts" of the word are its meanings, but there is the freedom between the conversing characters of choosing which meaning and thus interpretation of what was said.
aybala50 asked in class about the nature of reality pertaining to dreams. If people are real, shouldn't dreams be real too?
"Reality isn't just "out there", like some block of cement: reality is an interpretation. In a sense we co-create our reality. And we do that all the time, every day. One day we wake up and we're in a great mood, the city we live in is a beautiful city, the next day it's an ugly city. That's just the way we interpret things. We're not free necessarily to choose the facts of our life, but there is an element of freedom in how we interpret them."
-Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
The quote sings a similar tune to that of our chatter discussion. Chatter between people helps establish a consensus (or a majority, depending on who we're leaving out) for a basic reality, on shaky grounds though it may be. When our discussion moved to dreams after aybala50's question, a few of us agreed that dreams were a sign from one's mind (conscience or sub-conscience). Taken in this manner, dreams could be interpreted as chatter of the mind, an experiment in determining reality. Another aspect of our minds (that have very much to do with dreams) could be seen this way:
the imagination.
In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one may assume that Alice's adventures are a result of Alice's childish (and fantastical) imagination. Our imaginations are our tools for musing over the "what if". When we start interpreting and tearing deeper into the work to search for meaning, we are clashing our imaginations against those of Lewis Carrol and of the character of Alice. As Anne Dalke suggested, Alice in Wonderland can be taken as parodying scholars' attempts at finding deeper meaning within phrases or words. In other words, Lewis Carrol is poking fun at the scholars by showing that their interpretations are formed merely by their imaginations. It's all in their heads, like Wonderland is for Alice.
For Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, interpretation of events are key to the texts. A short example would be the various puns and misunderstandings with the meaning of words. For these numerous circumstances, Alice would interpret a phrase one way while her companion of the moment would take an entirely different approach. The "facts" of the word are its meanings, but there is the freedom between the conversing characters of choosing which meaning and thus interpretation of what was said.
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