David's Escape to Wonderland

In the Graphic Novel Stitches, David Small uses many references to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Small uses Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; to show how David uses this childhood story as an escape from the mental and physical abuse caused by his parents, grandparents, and other people around him.

In the opening of the book Small depicts David laying on the floor of the living room drawing the bunny rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This is the first reference from the book that the reader sees. Here in the opening the reader does not yet know about David's way of "escape". But, it can be inferred that he is distracting himself with it because David goes on to talk about his mother Betty's "language"; "...the slamming of the kitchen cupboard doors....That was her language"  (Small 14). This small reference to the kitchen cupboards that David makes can be taken insignificant at the beginning of the book. The reader soon learns how significant it really is because when his mother is mad she slams things.

David's mother goes to play golf and leaves the care of David in his brother’s hands for four hours. Tim, David's older brother tells David to go upstairs with him so they can go look at their father’s books. David gets disturbed by what he sees and goes into his own world "It was time to play Alice" (55). In this part of the book David wraps a yellow towel around his head. He believes that what gives Alice the "magic powers" to go to Wonderland is her hair. So David runs around town trying to find his way into Wonderland he ends up at a public playground. There, boys call him names for wearing the towel on his head and he is forced to retreat back home. There he finds his way into Wonderland through his drawing paper (62).

After David's second surgery. He finds out that his parents lied to him about the cyst on his neck. It wasn't a cyst after all it was cancer and his parents didn't tell him. He also finds out that the small amount of kindness that was showed to him at the hospital, was all because his parents thought he was going to die. So, after David has his second surgery he begins to feel invisible because of the loss of one of his vocal cords. David begins to retreat inside of himself because he cannot use his voice. One night he has a dream that like Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, he enters these doors and they continue to get smaller and smaller until the smallest one he can fit through. Opens up into this room filled with clutter. The reader then infers that the clutter in this room represents the obstacles he must overcome in his life. Which will include the physical and mental abuse he has incurred from his parents, grandparents and as well as the cancer that his parents kept from him.



Works Cited

Small, David.  Stitches: A Memoir.  New York: Norton, 2009.  Print.