How the Alice in Wonderland Caterpillar character was ahead of his time

Sidney Martin (G8)

Published Issue 3 2021-2022

Arts and Creativity

Little was it known that a movie, created in 1951, based on a book in 1895, where a little girl who follows a rabbit down a rabbit hole where she experienced a fantasy world filled with anthropomorphic creatures, would be 70 years ahead of its time. Well, that is what Walt Disney did when he made his animated movie based on Lewis Carrol’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Caterpillar from this movie is asking questions to Alice in the movie like, “Who are you?” and others. As he is saying these questions he is smoking hookah, and when he is talking to Alice, smoke letters are formed from the hookah. Now, as said before, one of the questions the caterpillar asked Alice was “Who are you?” but, when he said this the hookah formed an “O” for “Who”, an “R” for “are”, and a “U’ for “you?”

This looks quite similar to how youth today text with each other. Knowing how the caterpillar’s words were turned into letters and how today’s youth text to each other, shows that Lewis Carrol was thinking ahead of his time when creating the book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s strange to think that a caterpillar created in 1895 - and then the film created in 1951 - predicted a small part of our future. These devices and extraordinary things called “phones” were already figured out by the Caterpillar in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This can be a lesson to all of us that even children’s movies and books can be the future. Like when we think it is absurd to think that a caterpillar could reveal the future or a boy named Peter Pan from Neverland could reveal how to fly. Hope u think about this and how the caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland influenced u.