For Friday: Tolbert, “Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass” (pp.152-166)

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why doesn’t Louisa find the rabbit holes of other people interesting? What’s wrong with other people’s fantasies? (and how might this relate to why Langford left his own)?

Q2: Why do the Others invade the ‘real world’ and try to assimilate into jobs, work clothes, and TV shows? Why don’t they establish their own worlds and laws? Consider this passage: “They all wore business dress, and when the train stopped, they hurried off and into the street like any other group of commuters. The only difference was that they were smiling” (161).

Q3: Louise realizes at the end of the story that “now that she was elevated above her problems, literally, she could see the world for what it was becoming—something stranger than whatever could be on the other side of a single rabbit hole. Why would she want to leave this?” (165). Why was she unable to see this before? Why can the entire world be a rabbit hole if you look at it correctly?

Q4: Considering that this entire story isn’t real, and therefore can be seen as a metaphor, or a finger pointing to a different “moon” (remember our discussion on Wednesday), what might it mean that we all have our own “rabbit holes,” and that none of them are prisons...we can choose to exit and enter them at will? What might be the advantage of having a fantasy world that you visit¸ rather than live in?