In his novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", Lewis Carroll has his young heroine, Alice, meeting a caterpillar in chapter V, of all things.
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
The Caterpillar, like many of the characters in Carroll's story, is a puerile version of the much more powerful and dangerous archetype of the dragon. Like the dragon he seems imperious and threatening to Alice. He coils about as a dragon would and blows smoke out of his mouth. Even in Tenniel's illustration one can easily see that the caterpillar is coiled about himself, dragon fashion.
Tenniel also cleverly weaves in the deceptive nature of the dragon in that the upper part of the caterpillar seems to be the profile of a face when actually they are feet on the caterpillar. Like images seen in clouds, the viewer perceives the feet as nose and chin.
Tenniel's illustration also has the coil of the hookah which the caterpillar is smoking curling about him in a golden spiral. This image in mathematics reflects the Fibonacci sequence and is frequently used as an image of the infinity of creation based on the pattern of the LOGOS.
In that pattern a person easily can lose their own individuality and have no answer to the question "who are you?" Thus Alice struggles to respond to the Caterpillar's initial discouraging question;
“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.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”
“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.
“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
Her difficulty knowing who she is reflects her current confusion in growing up. The story of "Alice in Wonderland" is itself a story about those difficulty years of early youth when one is no longer a child and not quite an adult - an era which the Ancient World referred to as the chrysalis (or golden) era of life. In this stage a person ceases happily crawling about the world eating everything, retreats inwardly, tends to isolate themselves & weave a shell around them, and no longer knows who they are. Not quite adult and not quite child they find themselves in a liminal state of metamorphosis.
Well, that's the image, the life of the butterfly, used in the Ancient World to represent the transformation from child to adult.
As a child one is oblivious to the world around them, rolling blindly from one good meal to the next. As a youth, anxiety, pain, suffering all begin to force one to reckon with the difficulties of the world. The natural reaction is confusion and a tendency to retreat into a thick coat of armor about oneself (grunts, loud music, and shuffling of feet are forms of armor). Witness Alice's confusion at not being able to "remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!” Her inability to say correctly the poem about youth and age ("You are old, Father William") bears witness to the confusion of youth.
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”
“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?”
“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
“I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?”
“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”
“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”
“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
What made you so awfully clever?”
“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”
As the caterpillar replies, "That is not said right." Indeed, Alice is in a very confusing spot in her life, and like most young people, she covers her confusion with a mixture of petulant retreat, over-confident hubris, and tears.
Thank God for us all that this stage is transitory! Indeed, during that period of being in a cocoon change is occurring; questions are asked; the mind is actively observing and the soul is processing; until finally from the chrysalis emerges the adult, like a beautiful flying dragon of a thing.
The advice of the caterpillar is to eat from "both sides" of the mushroom. There are many who interpret this as a narcotic reference (Jefferson Airplane is one) and indeed the Ancient World saw narcotics as a way to jump start the maturity process.
But we have to consider also that the circle of the mushroom is like life itself; the spiral made static. To grab hold of it "from both sides" and then to eat of it is to eat of both the dark and the light; the bitter and the sweet; the wine and the gall; the good jelly beans and the licorice.
“One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”
As a child we want the world to be only sweetness and candy, everyone our friend, God in his place and Santa Claus as Christmas. Part of the shock of entering into youth is finding that there is great bitterness in the world. Maturity comes from accepting the bitterness and learning to balance the two sides of life and thus not grow "too big" or "too small".
It certainly seems a turning point for Alice in her "journey underground" as after this encounter with the dragon she seems more able to deal with the creatures of Wonderland (wonder being the basis of philosophy) with authority and confidence, progressing eventually toward her adult role as Persephone, queen of the underworld.
