Don’t Leave Me
December 3, 2009 
We’re all starting to come of age now. It’s part of the natural process, in life, that we must face to in order to become who we are for the rest our days on Earth. And most of our parents still think that we’re the same 5 year-old version of ourselves, and want us to be as close them as possible. The day is coming too quickly, for all of us, that we’ll be graduating and be off to college. Parents are afraid of us leaving them and possibly never returning home, not even to visit. So they cling onto, and implying, to us that are wanting us to stay home longer. However, we can’t stop growing up, it’s apart of life. With time, we become more mature and independent than we use to be. And eventually, the time will come that our parents will have to realize that we’re no longer a child, even though we technically still are, and we are to start our own lives.
In Ch. 4, of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll expresses this type of relationship when Alice is going through the different size changes, in the White Rabbit’s house. We know, from the annotations, Carroll had always wanted to be close to Alice Liddell, because he feelings for her. However he knew that he couldn’t be close to her foever, because she’ll eventually grow up and leave. Here’s an excerpt from my comment on Alex Dolabi’s, Growing Pains:
Back in Carroll’s era, girls were likely to be considered as ladies, or young women, when they came of the age of around 13 or 15. So while Carroll was writing this story, he must have paused for a moment and pondered what was to happen to little Alice when she came of age? He was in fear of losing her, as child, and becoming an independent person. All Carroll wanted was for Alice to close him.
When Alice started to drink the bottle off the Rabbit’s table, she started to grow rapidly once more. She grew so big that she had to be on her knees and elbows just fit, and not crashing through the roof. Metaphorically speaking, Alice was maturing so fast, to Carroll, he feared that she’ll become independent and move away from him. However, she wasn’t fully independent yet, hence why Carroll didn’t write Alice going through the roof. If Alice did break through, that would have meant Alice Liddell had become to independent and free to do anything. But Carroll didn’t like that, so when Alice shrank back down, Carroll was symbolizing that he doesn’t want her to leave him yet, and that she is still a little girl.
Agreed, a well crafted post that is able to tie the two worlds together. It is analysis like this that allows random visitors to connect to the story on a personal level without having even read the novel. Which, I imagine was one of your goals. Well done.
This is just a beautiful post. I really like how well you were able to write about your own situation in the context of Carroll’s words. You have taken a single example within the story and analyzed it with active description and pitch-perfect comparison. This one is definitely going in the list of my favorites.