The most famous grin

Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”
The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

So, who’s the oddest character you’ve come across in a book? And when I say ‘odd’, I really mean ODD. A character unlike any other. I can think of a few dozen who are strange, but there’s one who beats all of them. Half the time, you see, he doesn’t have a body — just a grin! Some of you, if you’ve read the book or seen one of the various movies, will know just who I’m talking about — the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Today, I’m off to meet him, or maybe just see the grin? I really have no idea what to expect.

“What do you want to see?” said a deep, purry voice in my ear. I jumped and turned around to see a big, fat tabby sitting on the wall that I was leaning against. “Look here, this is why you’re weird — you just appear unannounced and, er... disappear as you’re doing now,” I said rather crossly as I watched the cat’s body disappear inch by inch until there was just a head hanging in the air. “I’m not weird or crazy... my reality is just different from yours,” said the head. “Are you real?” I asked. “Real people don’t behave like that.” “Ah!” said the cat. “What is reality? Are you saying that only when I have a body, I’m real?” “Well, yes…” “But aren’t ideas real? Isn’t a thought real? Isn’t the wind real? Do all these things have bodies?” My head began to spin. This was no ordinary interview… “Reality is defined,” said the cat, “by your perspective rather than by a fixed, objective truth. As I told Alice, a dog wags its tail when it’s happy, but I wag my tail when I’m angry, so which is the truth? You know how, when you’re describing an event that happened some years ago to your family, your friend keeps butting into the story to make corrections? You were both there, but you both saw the reality differently.” I thought about what he said. “I suppose that’s true…,” I said slowly, “but…” “Yes…?” inquired the cat as it reappeared slowly.

“Okay, okay… stop it!” “Stop what?” asked my interviewee. “This habit of yours of muddling things up until I don’t know right from wrong.” He grinned and opened his mouth to say something else when I hastily cut in. “Why are you a Cheshire Cat and not just any cat?” “Well, way before Carroll wrote about me, there was already an idiom, ‘grinning like a Cheshire Cat’. I suppose that the cats in Cheshire were well fed on the dairy products of the area and so were always content and grinning. It might also have been the shape of the cheese made in the area, shaped a bit like a grin.”

“Why couldn’t you have helped poor Alice instead of bugging her all the time?” “Bugging her all the time? Me?” the cat asked in mock dismay. “Imagine the miserable time she would have had at the Queen’s croquet game but for my timely appearance.” I smiled as I remembered how the queen was so put off by the disembodied head of the cat and frustrated that the executioner couldn’t very well chop off a head when it was only a head! I had to admit that that was hugely entertaining.

“Yes, but what about the time when you sent her off to the Mad Hatter’s tea party instead of helping her find the way?” “Well, she’s the one who said she didn’t know where she wanted to go. And so, it didn’t really matter where she went, did it? She needed to see that everyone is a little bit mad and that you need to accept chaos and be a bit mad to get through life.” “That’s not true! I’m not mad!” I said indignantly. The cat grinned and began to disappear slowly.

“No, no! Don’t go away! I have a couple more questions to ask you,” I said. “Quickly then,” said the disembodied head. “I just wanted to understand why you didn’t guide poor Alice properly.” “How could I tell her which path to take when she couldn’t tell me where she wanted to go? You can’t get an answer without asking the right question! You can’t choose the ‘right’ path if you have no goal in mind!” I had to admit that that sort of made sense.

“So, what was your actual role in Wonderland? You don’t answer questions, you don’t guide people or help them, you’re not exactly the funniest person there…”

“I like to think of myself as a latter-day Socrates. I ask questions that make people think, much like Socrates did.” I rolled my eyes. “I give direction so that people might experience life for themselves, and it isn’t my job to be funny. Everybody is funny if you observe life. I enjoy watching events — the world is funny.” And with that, the head disappeared.

This made me wonder if Carroll’s true interest was philosophy, despite a strong background in logic and mathematics.