This notable piece of advice was given to the White Rabbit by the King in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice In Wonderland.’
It could also be argued as to whether or not the author took his own advice when it came to leading the reader down the rabbit hole and into Carroll’s bewitching and disjointed world.
“Why am I mentioning Alice?” I hear you ask.
In short, there are more than a few comparisons to be made between Rachel Klein’s ‘The Moth Diaries’ and Caroll’s Wonderland in terms of varying perceptions on an abstract reality.
Kleins un-named and unreliable narrator of the diary begins her story at its end,
Explaining in its preface written thirty years later that the diary was published on the suggestion of her psychiatrist.
We now know that our diarists outcome is not necessarily a happy one, however this at no point hinders the journey.
When the diary begins, we meet its then sixteen year old narrator during her junior year as a boarder at Brangwyn Hall, an all girls school.
Having recently suffered the loss of her poet father from suicide, the narrator is clearly struggling to accept the enormity of her feelings and begins to emotionally distance herself from her mother who she is unable to detach from the grief.
The diarist has been waiting all summer to return to school, only to find it does not meet her expectations, describing the suites disappointingly bare rooms with dirty smudges on the walls.
This is only mentioned quickly and could easily be dismissed as nothing more than the usual trials and tribulations of boarding, yet it also subtly points out the diarists often rose-tinted preconceptions.
Lucy too does not match up to the narrators expectations, instead she is drawn to the mysterious newcomer, Ernessa, who the narrator sees as an instant threat.
Though the diarist is desperate for Lucy’s friendship, she is often unwilling to acknowledge her feelings. This only serves to push Lucy further toward Ernessa and in the process the diarist spirals further out of control.
There are many literary points of reference within this book (twenty three, to be exact,) that link both the story and its characters together as well as further fueling the diarists obsessions.
For her English class our unnamed narrator begins to read LeFanu’s ‘Camilla’ which tells the story of a mysterious young woman who arrives at a castle and bewitches the girl who lives there.
The narrator quickly finds similarities between this story and Lucy and Ernessa’s relationship, believing that Ernessa is now a Vampire who is feeding from Lucy and accounting for her increasingly frail state.
The possibility of Lucy exploring her sexuality as she battles an eating disorder is not directly tackled by the diaries narrator as her own view of reality has become increasingly blurred. Even the reader is now left wondering what is real and what is imagination.
Both the narrator and her fellow pupils each react differently to the intensity of their relationships and as the outside world is all but forgotten.
Mortality becomes something to be gambled with and death makes its dark presence felt on more than one occasion, isolating the girls further.
The diarist is now so deeply trapped within her own imagination that she can see only Ernessa to blame.
Brangwyn Hall is an island and the students within it are left shipwrecked, creating the perfect climate for our diarists neuroses to grow.
In its afterword, ‘The Moth Diaries’ leaves us at the end of it’s beginning, reading in stark contrast to its adolescent narrator and attempting to make sense of the dark and claustrophobic world the diary had presented us with:
“Nothing existed outside ourselves and school. For us the world of politics, social revolution, the war in Vietnam never happened. Even when it came to ideas and books, we were only interested in what reflected us.”
Kleins skill of abstract story telling allows for the reader to question everything with little to worry of the answers and conveys the message that perhaps the true horror comes in losing ourselves.
