ALICE DOWN

THE PROVERBIAL RABBIT HOLE: CURIOSITY, CONSCIOUSNESS. AND THE COST OF ENDLESS DESCENT

- By Shaleeka Jayalath

There are few images in literature as striking and enduring as that of a curious young girl tumbling headlong down a rabbit hole into a world that defies logic and expectation.

When Lewis Carroll first wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, he anchored his narrative with this simple yet evocative moment: Alice sees a white rabbit, follows it into its burrow, and begins a fall that will forever alter her sense of reality. Over the decades, the rabbit hole has become more than a plot device; it has evolved into a powerful metaphor for those moments when we cross a threshold, intellectually, emotionally, or culturally, and find ourselves in unfamiliar territory, uncertain of the rules that govern it.

At its most immediate level, the rabbit hole symbolises a gateway into a new world. It marks the point at which the ordinary gives way to the extraordinary, when curiosity overrides caution and the familiar surface of life fractures to reveal something stranger beneath. Crucially, Carroll does not rush this transition. Alice does not plunge and arrive; she falls for a long time. During this descent she has space to observe her surroundings, to make guesses that turn out to be wrong, to drift into daydreams, to snack, to speculate about distant places, and to hover between alertness and sleep. The journey itself becomes somewhat of a suspended state, being neither here nor there, where thought wanders and certainty dissolves.