Alice In Wonderland: A Retrospective of the ADHD Protagonist

"I give myself very good advice,

But I very seldom follow it.

That explains the trouble that I'm always in."

So let me start this Alice in Wonderland retrospective by making one thing blatantly clear: There would be NO Wonderland without Alice. One cannot exist without the other. This is because Alice's "Wonderland" is her uncontrollable and active imagination. Alice is a young English girl with undiagnosed ADHD. She is a personification of a child with an overactive imagination and constant need for energy and excitement. The story begins with her in the field with her mother. She quickly grows bored of her time here and begins to fantasize about a world of her own where everything could make sense to her and she could finally attain focus on the energetic whimsy around her. As is the case with the ADHD protagonist, boredom often leads to mental disassociation, or what the more common person would refer to as a "daydream."

"Within that world of my own,

I could listen to a babbling brook,

And hear a song that I could understand,

I keep wishing it could be that way,

Because my world would be a wonderland."

The reason for this Wonderland being this place of madness and discord is because as is the case with any person with ADHD, they are energized by a certain rush of creative adrenaline and a liberation of thoughts, but this can lead to over stimulation and panic attacks. Everything within Alice's Wonderland is a different component of Alice's subconscious screaming at her. Wonderland at least in most iterations is the personification of Alice's dreamworld. It portrays the world as imaginative and creative as Alice prefers to see the world. However deeper within that world is sheer madness and fear as Alice dreamily manifests some of her real world obstacles, such as the large and booming temperamental red queen, portraying an intimidating matronly figure of sorts. That on top of the group of racist flowers exiling her for being a 'weed' may be a part of her mother's sophisticated lifestyle, a lifestyle which Alice resents being the adventurous youth she is.

The Cheshire Cat is the most illusive figure in Wonderland. It toys with her, offering what seems to be beacons of hope at times only to lead her further down the rabbit hole. The cat enjoys making a fool out of the red queen and manipulating her to the point of infuriating, only for her to take the blame on the innocent little girl instead of the illusion cat itself. There could be some metaphor of political manipulation here, but what I find interesting is the fact that Alice herself loves cats. Not only that but if every part of Wonderland is a different component of Alice's subconscious... What does this constantly grinning, reality distorting and malicious cat figure represent?

The white rabbit is the object which catches Alice's attention and leads her to the rabbit hole. But the rabbit itself doesn't even acknowledge Alice's existence. Its a figurehead of curiosity, an aimless thought which draws our attention deeper into the rabbit hole. Eventually like Alice we find ourselves so deep within the rabbit hole question why we began pursuing this thought to begin with. Its moments like these the Chesire Cat manifests itself and for lack of a better word, gives Alice very very bad advice which only brings her deeper into the heart of Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat does not conform to Wonderland's monarchy and even toys around with it, making the Cheshire Cat more of a direct manifestation of Wonderland itself. Even the red queen, the most antagonistic figure, is just another silly component of Wonderland meant to entertain Alice with how silly and shrewd she is. Throughout the story she is afraid of antagonizing the red queen further, but the cat so eloquently offers to help make the queen even more mad.

"Veneno 7" track thumbnail by SpaceGhostPurrp, displaying a psychedelic filter over The Cheshire Cat

This does in turn lead to the face off scene where Alice grows into a giant and calls the queen out on her bullshit, but as she does this she shrinks back down to size so that she can be once again susceptible to any punishment the red queen imposes upon her.

The Cheshire Cat is an agent of chaos, mocking Alice's susceptibility to the insane and chaotic world around her. It does not seek to make anyone's life any better—only to make Wonderland more mad. Trying to raise the stakes of Alice's predicament to only bemuse the cat's own entertainment. If the Cheshire Cat truly is the direct manifestation of Wonderland, and Wonderland is the dream world to the ADHD protagonist, then the Cheshire Cat is the energetic madness which controls curiosity, controls focus, and does whatever the hell it wants with it. That being said, Alice and the Chesire Cat's interactions are Alice conferring with her own subconscious. Her own persona. Her sleeping desire to make the world more mad so that the dream can lure her in even more.

Alice is high on my list of favorite characters in fiction because she was the very first protagonist I could easily envision myself becoming. I have ADHD myself and find that am constantly chasing white rabbits. I find myself fascinated with rabbit holes, but am also prone to being overstimulated or anxious the longer I let myself get lost within them. I was originally going to primarily analyze the Cheshire Cat within this article here as his existence and what he represents perplexes me, but as previously stated, everything in Wonderland is a manifestation of Alice's subconscious—even the Cheshire Cat. One cannot exist without the other.