Part 4: Alice’s Talk with the Caterpillar
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
Alice’s entire reality was destroyed in a moment’s notice. The way she is forced to interact with Wonderland is not the same as in England. The constructs used to define her identity no longer hold. She can change her size with a single bite of food, her lessons from school are disproven, and she spends her time talking to animals. Every fact Alice took for granted being proven false begs the question if she is even Alice anymore.
In one sense, a person can define themselves through past and present experiences. Thoughts, composure, and interactions within an environment vary from person to person based on identity. Sexual assault is traumatic and will be scarred in one’s memory forever. Whether consciously or not, it factors into personal and social dynamics. A decision made before an attack may be different from the same decision a person would make following an attack. Thus, survivors are left to cope with the ways in which this trauma changed them.
