Dodgson

Poets are characterized as the “imagination of past generations, the present, and all future generations to come.” They are the people that take the everyday activities, problems, and emotions and make beautiful pieces of art with them, in the context of words written on a piece of paper. Many poets seem to have started at very young ages, but many have found the passion of writing in their mid 20‘s, 30‘s and even later on. Poets have child-like imaginations, and dream of dark mysterious places, or a magical land beneath the roots of a tall oak tree. Among these writers is Lewis Carroll, or Charles L. Dodgson. Since the beginning of time, people have said everything that happens to a person can and will affect he or she for the rest of that person’s life. What most people can only fathom may come true in a poets imagination. If you put these two statements together, who knows what will be the result. What I would like to know is this: What events happened to Charles L. Dodgson to make him one of the greatest writers and poets of all time' It is said that as a young boy Charles would perform private “magic” shows for his family. He was at the ripe age of 7 years old, and his mother could already tell that his imagination was off the walls. His family consisted of 7 boys and 4 girls. Charles was the eldest of all the boys, and therefore had the job of entertaining them and his younger sisters. To do this, he would perform multiple puppet shows, magic shows, and make up different games to play with his siblings. This, his family would soon discover, gave him an imagination like no other. He would be able to create stories and poems that involved talking rabbits, mad tea parties, and magical evenings on a boat. Charles’ education was given to him as a child through his father and mother. His father focused mainly on arithmetic, while his mother taught him the grammar and aspects of writing that he would use to make him one of the most well-known writers of all. He was born in Cheshire and lived that until the age of 11 when he and his family moved to Crofton-Tees, Yorkshire. He was quickly enrolled in Richmond school, and started secondary education that same year. The next year and a half would prepare him for his formative education at the Rugby School. Charles would excel in all areas of education: literature, arithmetic, languages (Latin and Greek), and scripture. In 1851, he was accepted and attended Oxford University, but it was also then that his mother died. He bolted back to their home for the her funeral. With all his success in mathematics, Dodgson became a tutor and earned his honors degree in math at Christ Church. Not soon after the Dean of the school died, a man named Henry George Liddell was appointed as the new dean. The appointment of Henry George Liddell was considered, and is still considered, something that sparked Dodgson’s imagination. One of his best works is called “Alice’s Underground Adventures”, better known to us as “Alice In Wonderland”. This epic work of literature came to him as he was telling the daughters of Mr. Liddell a story on a boat ride one sunny afternoon. Charles was on the boat with Mr. Liddell and his two daughters when he was asked to tell a story. He then went on to talk about a little girl, named Alice, and how she discovered an underground world filled with distraught rabbits, crazy mad-hatters, and many more unimaginable characters. Alice Pleasance Liddell loved the story, and asked him to write it in a book for her. It is now made into different versions of plays, and even a movie. What may seem abnormal to us is that Charles Dodgson made all of this up in the spur of a moment and at the same rate as a ticking clock. He used the imagination he had developed from telling his brothers and sister jokes, making puppet shows, and doing unexplainable magic tricks, to create such a compelling and epic story. When he was telling that fable, he had no idea that it was going to be known to us as one of the greatest stories of all time. The way he put his imagination into words on paper always conveyed as him being a little kid again, learning from his loving mother in the kitchen everyday. As readers, we can tell that the same “big brother playing Mr. Muffin head” is still interweaved within the text of his books, poems, and stories.