During Nathan Hensley’s talk about the climate crisis and the force of literature, I found myself struggling to see the connections he was trying to make. Switching between the science realm and the literary fictional realm throughout the talk made it difficult for me to focus on the central point or look at the bigger picture. The likening of the original Alice in Wonderland story and our modern day environmental issues is certainly not a conventional comparison. But the more I thought about it following the lecture, the more this strange simile — as well as the point Hensley was trying to make — began to make sense.
The juxtaposition of Alice in Wonderland and the current climate situation was obviously just one of many that could have been made, but it is particularly good for Hensley’s argument in many respects. It offers a depiction of two separate worlds: the real world and the wonderland. Alice is abruptly thrown into the wonderland after previously being in the real world for her entire existence. This new world, she learns, does not behave or operate in the same way that the real world she knew did. She attempts to continue acting as though she were in the real world when in reality, she needs to curb her thinking and adapt to this new environment. This is what Hensley is using as a commentary on our current struggles with a changing environment and climate, and how we must adapt our mannerisms and ideas to best suit our new, changing world. We, as humans, continue to act in a way that put us at risk in the first place, and now that serious problems have started to rear their ugly heads, we are realizing that it was and is a mistake to act as though our environment has gone unchanged or has not been affected as a direct result of us. We now live in the Anthropocene, an era in which humans dominate the planet and have the power to save or destroy it. We have created our own separate wonderland, with cities and cars and boats and plastic, things not found in the natural, or rather, “real” world.
We have people outright rejecting the idea of climate change, ones that are blind to the temperature changes, rising oceans, changes in weather patterns, or people that simply don’t care about the environment because “it won’t affect them.” These are our modern-day Alices who, for whatever reason, refuse to change their ways to adapt to the new environment we have brought upon ourselves and the necessary actions we need to take to keep us from taking life as we know it away forever.
Although I had mixed feelings leaving his lecture, I have come to understand the parallels Nathan Hensley was attempting to shed light on between the forces of past literature and their presence in contemporary society and the climate crisis. The talk has introduced a new way of thinking to me that I will be sure to think about next time I crack open a piece of literature.