Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

In the English Capstone class this semester, we have begun talking about our term paper ideas. Mine stems from "Women beware Women", where a powerful scene takes place involving a rape running parallel with a chess game. Stick with me here, I do have a point to all this.

In Thomas Middleton's "Women Beware Women", a scene is played out where Livia has constructed a plot to allow the Duke to "have" Bianca, and Livia distracts Bianca's Mother downstairs with a game of chess. This game and Livia's lines during it turn out to make a sort of "softening" of the actual horrors occuring upstairs between the Duke and Bianca (even though some could argue it is not rape). Livia says things like, " Here's a duke will strike a sure stroke for the game anon; Your pawn can not come back to relieve itself." Whilst Mother thinks that Livia is talking only of the game at hand, she is actually using the game as a metaphor to speak of her triumph in the upstairs events as well. Quite intelligent writing by Middleton if I do say so myself.

Now, "Where is he getting with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?" you might ask yourself. Well, I think that this "game" motif fits in perfectly when speaking of the conversation between the Tweedle's and Alice. If, by some chance, the Red King is the dreaming "creator" of Alice and all things around her in Wonderland, then he would only be the one "real" thing in Wonderland.

But if the Red King is the one "real" thing there, that would mean that all things that Alice knows in Wonderland are only "pawns" to his imagination. You see, just like when you are in a dream and know you're there, you can manipulate the things around you because they're not real. And like the pieces of a chess game, all of the characters in the dream have their purposes and roles that they carry out, some can only move ahead two spaces, some only move in L's, and some (the queen) can move as far in one direction as they want, but she's still restrained by the confines of the board itself (the dream) and the mover of the pieces (the dreamer).

I think Carroll is touching on a notion of us all being within the confines of an "ultimate" dreamer. He's attempting to understand and at least spark the notions of something "out there" that has control of us all in the big game of life. Alice's tears are only as real as reality really is. In someone else's reality her tears are nothing but a figment of their imagination. Perhaps tweedle dee and tweedle dum knew they were within the story being written, and knew that Alice's tears were only as real as someone reading about them would find them to be. If so, wouldn't that make some of these two bafflingly bouncy boys some of the most intelligent characters within the book? Does the Caterpiller know of these things as well? Can questions ever really lead to real answers?

Is someone reading YOUR book?