“The Great Fall” of Authority
Rebecca Speer
As Alice journeys through
Wonderland and Looking-glass Land,
she encounters a variety of characters whose nonsensical assertions call into question
her tacit ontological assumptions. The strange logic these characters introduce
to Alice forces her to acknowledge and
reevaluate learned perceptions that she had previously accepted as objective
truths. Because many of Carroll’s absurdities bear an exaggerated but
recognizable resemblance to observable phenomena in society, the paradoxically
meaningful nonsense causes Alice (and the reader) to experience epiphanies
about the nature of the phenomena Carroll satirizes. In this way, Carroll
cleverly, and ironically, uses nonsense to raise consciousness. Specifically,
Carroll employs nonsense in the Alice
books to construct a satirical, dystopian view of authority. One example can be
inferred from Alice’s humorous
inability to remember her lessons, or memorized propaganda from schoolmasters
(who have authority over knowledge). Because Alice
suddenly cannot remember what these schoolmasters have forced her to learn, the
lessons are consequently illustrated as useless and asinine, and the teachers
as senseless, counterproductive and undeserving of the position of authority
they have secured. Carroll ultimately ridicules authority figures, pedagogues
in particular, through the character, Humpty Dumpty. His hyperbolic depiction
of Humpty Dumpty as a narcissist, a pedant, and a charlatan exposes authority
figures for what they often are: unnecessary, and even disadvantageous.
Humpty Dumpty’s narcissism is immediately apparent. As soon as Alice
stumbles upon him, Humpty Dumpty proclaims his self-importance and implies Alice’s
inferiority. He is extremely defensive and unwilling to consider any remark
that he perceives as potentially criticizing, since he believes himself to be a
superior creature. The egg therefore responds to Alice’s
unintentionally insulting comments by ridiculing her, thereby shifting the negative
attention to Alice so that he can
preserve his inflated self image and gain control over the conversation. In
addition to belittling Alice to demonstrate
his power, Humpty Dumpty egregiously boasts about his connection with the King
to illustrate his elite status. Humpty Dumpty’s arrogant behavior,
including bragging about his affiliation with the King, can primarily be
attributed to the power and authority he believes he deserves for being an
intellectual. Humpty Dumpty clearly views himself as extraordinarily brilliant;
he is so inordinately intelligent that he knows the answers to all questions
(232). While Humpty Dumpty knows everything, everyone else, particularly Alice,
knows nothing: “’Wrong!’
Humpty Dumpty exclaim[s] triumphantly.... ‘You don’t know
what you’re talking about!’” (235, 237). The egg’s
egotism, and Alice’s willingness
to put up with it, establishes Humpty Dumpty’s authoritative role
throughout their interaction. His pomposity is finally complete at the
chapter’s conclusion when he abruptly dismisses Alice,
informing her that she is common and unworthy of his remembering her. Humpty
Dumpty’s behavior serves to keep him in control of the conversation and
its conclusion, as well as to implicitly establish himself as unique and memorable
through his declaration of Alice’s
mediocrity. According to Humpty Dumpty, he “’shouldn’t know [Alice]
again if [they] did meet... [because
she’s] so exactly like other people’” (244-245). On the
contrary, Humpty Dumpty’s narcissism leads him to perceive his
acquaintanceship to be impressive and unforgettable, and certainly not simply because
he is a talking egg in a cravat.
While Carroll’s depiction of Humpty Dumpty as a narcissistic egg
represents a portion of the amusing nonsense that comprises the Alice
books, this portrayal of Humpty Dumpty simultaneously serves to warn readers
about how unacceptable and destructive such a characteristic in authority
figures can be. The adversity of Humpty Dumpty’s narcissism is established
by the fact that he is an egg sitting atop a narrow wall, a ridiculous
character on an undeserved pedestal. Humpty Dumpty’s excessive self-love
prevents him from being “down to earth,” as well as from being able
to be on “common ground” with anyone else. Instead, Humpty Dumpty
teeters on his wall in a world of his own, condescendingly looking down at
anyone who passes by. The fate of the conceited Humpty Dumpty is inevitable; it
is the nursery rhyme’s promise that he will have “a great
fall.” Using the common knowledge of Humpty Dumpty’s tragic destiny
to his advantage, Carroll demonstrates that overconfidence is dangerous, and
often catastrophic.
In addition to his laughable narcissism, particularly regarding his intellectual
merit, Humpty Dumpty is portrayed as a pedant throughout his interaction with Alice.
He is a rigid, rule-based thinker who dominates intellectual discussions with
his own agenda. Throughout his conversation with Alice,
Humpty Dumpty delivers a series of pedantic lectures that appoint him as an
intellectual authority figure and altercast Alice
as someone in need of his invaluable instruction. Humpty Dumpty claims to be
the master of meaning: “’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty
[says] in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to
mean—neither more nor less’” (238). He has command over
language, taming personified verbs and adjectives (238), as well as taming
anyone foolish enough to interrupt him (242). Humpty Dumpty compulsively and authoritatively
hogs the spotlight throughout the entire conversation with Alice
with his supposed immense body of wisdom. The egg’s ostentatious display
of knowledge, as well as his strict adherence to arbitrary rules, is most
evident, however, in his lecture on “Jabberwocky.” He gives Alice
a strict definition for each word in the poem, allowing no room for
interpretation about the words’ meanings. According to Humpty Dumpty, the
meaning of the poem is fixed and everyone must share a uniformed understanding
of it, that, of course, being Humpty Dumpty’s interpretation. His
inflexible views on literature and communication clearly establish him as an
autocrat who limits meaning and restricts options.
Carroll’s depiction of Humpty Dumpty as a pedant demonstrates the
adverse effects of rigid authority figures that lecture excessively. The
egg’s authoritarian reign over knowledge certainly seems to stifle
creative thinking and intellectual possibility. Rather than expanding
knowledge, Humpty Dumpty confines it by guarding a wall, which acts as a
barrier to intellectual exploration and growth for everyone with whom he comes
into contact. Thus while the narrow wall serves as a pedestal for the egg and
his fragile ego, it may also symbolize the intellectual oppression he inflicts on
others with his intolerant closed-mindedness.
Besides being a narcissist and a pedant, Humpty Dumpty appears ridiculous
because he is a charlatan. Like many abrasive, vociferous authority figures,
Humpty Dumpty is a pseudo-intellectual who makes numerous specious claims
despite his obnoxious declarations of expertise. The egg professes, for
instance, to be able to explain “...all poems that ever were invented—and
a good many that haven’t been invented yet” (239). The egg, as a
symbol, represents the beginning stage of development before the acquisition of
knowledge or experience, a being that essentially has “not been invented
yet.” Humpty Dumpty’s statement therefore reiterates his need to
assert himself onto everything, even existence itself. Consequently, this
grandiose claim not only establishes his narcissism, but also demolishes his
credibility as an intellectual. The egg’s first sign of intellectual
incompetence, however, is likely his ignorance of the Humpty Dumpty nursery
rhyme. While Humpty Dumpty acts as though he knows everything, he comically
lacks the most elementary knowledge that all of Carroll’s readers are
sure to have. His true imbecility is further revealed in his haughty challenge
of Alice’s ability to perform a
simple math equation without writing it down on paper. Moreover, when Alice
proceeds to humor Humpty Dumpty by actually writing the equation down and
presenting it to him, he ignorantly discloses his illiteracy by pretending to
analyze the equation while holding the paper upside down (237). If his poorly
masked illiteracy fails to solidify his idiocy, his preposterous definitions
for words such as “glory” and “impenetrability” surely
do. If Humpty Dumpty were portrayed as a creative revolutionary thinker, the
seemingly random manner in which he assigns meaning to words might be
inspiring. Because of his pedantry, however, his ludicrous definitions serve
more to establish him as ridiculous and incompetent. Humpty Dumpty believes
that meanings are fixed, but the fixed meaning of “glory” is hardly
“a nice knockdown argument” (238). The egg is simply contradicting
himself on a glorified power trip as the master of language. Furthermore,
Humpty Dumpty’s rigid notion that meaning is fixed and interpretations
are invariable is patently erroneous. According to contemporary communication
theorists, language is subjective and fluid; meaning is the mutual creation of
both people in any given interaction (Sroufe & Fleeson, 1988; Stamp, 1994).
Humpty Dumpty simply craves the power to invent and control meaning and then to
label it as fixed so that others must adhere to his rules.
Through Humpty Dumpty’s obvious, laughable charlatanism, combined
with his assumed authority, Carroll demonstrates to both Alice and the reader
that individuals in power should not necessarily be respected and blindly
followed. Like many authority figures, Humpty Dumpty is merely a power hungry
charlatan, unaware that the mistakes he inadvertently makes ultimately sabotage
his fabricated intellectual image. More important than the harm that
charlatanism can do to an authority figure’s self-image, however, is the
damage that it can inflict upon his/her followers when undetected or ignored.
It is not simply that Humpty Dumpty is a charlatan that makes him dangerous,
but rather the combination of his charlatanism and authoritarianism. The
egg’s ability to speak gobbledy-gook with conviction lends it
credibility, despite its patent falseness. Because he is a narcissist and a
pedant with an impressive lexicon and an authoritative manner, he is able to
make Alice doubt what she knows and
ultimately seek out and consider his specious, ridiculous propositions. Despite
numerous glaring indications that Humpty Dumpty is intellectually incompetent, Alice
believes his ludicrous claim of expertise in decoding the meanings of all poems
“sound[s] very hopeful” (239). As a result, Humpty Dumpty is able
to convince her about the meaning of “Jabberwocky,” destroying the
immediacy of the poem.
Ironically, the nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”
comments logically on how we make sense of the world. This nonsense serves to
educate us through presentations of new, and possibly enlightening, ways of
thinking about society. Contrarily, it also serves to exploit the truly nonsensical
nature of dominant societal structures and thought processes. Carroll uses ridiculous
characters, such as Humpty Dumpty, to satirize illogical phenomena in the
“real” world that often pass as natural and unworthy of scrutiny.
Because Humpty Dumpty is simultaneously constructed as a narcissist, a pedant,
a charlatan, and an authority figure,
Carroll succeeds in invalidating the notion of authority as necessarily
beneficial. By the end of the chapter, both Alice and the reader acknowledge
her exchange with Humpty Dumpty as tiresome and counterproductive. And as Alice
declares with disgust, “’Of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met—‘” she hears
the sound of Humpty Dumpty’s ill-fated fall from his pedestal, “a
heavy crash [that] shook the forest from end to end” (245).
Hardy Long Frank Prize, 2004
Instructor: Paul Thomas Murphy
Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alice
in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. New York:
Grosset & Dunlap, 1992.
Sroufe, L., & Fleeson, J. “The coherence of family
relationships.” In R. Hinde & J. Stevenson-Hinde, eds., Relationships within families: Mutual influences 7-25). Oxford: Clarendon, 1988: 7-25.
Stamp, G. (1994). The Appropriation of the Parental Role through Communication
during the Transition to Parenthood. Communication
Monographs 61 (1994): 89-112.
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