Week 13 Story: The Mad Hatter
No one ever questions why he's mad. They simply accept it at face value.
If I told you that the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you say?
If you were sensible, you would ask me - How? How do you know? How is it going to end? Where did you learn from this?
As human beings, you are curious to a fault and never stop looking for evidence. So why, when my friend the hatter tells people he is mad, do you simply just accept it?
I wonder, have you ever thought to ask him how he knows he's mad? And what happened to make him so?
Well I know what happened the day his brain split in two, and he started speaking in riddles. I'll never forget it actually, and it was quite possibly the worst thing we've ever seen.
Not many people know this, but the hatter used to have a wife. She was just like him, and they went together like two puzzle pieces. They just fit. It's hard to describe it, but if you ever met her, you would know. They were just right for each other.
Before the hatter became... well the hatter, he was quite fun to be around. We all were. In a way, the hatter's wife kept us sane. She was energetic and funny. She lit up a room, and her joy was contagious.
Back then, the hatter wasn't afraid to poke fun at anyone. He constantly made jokes, and teased anyone he could find. And one day, he went too far.
He teased one of the Queen's children, and it became inconsolable and belligerent. The Queen, being the protective mother she is, freaked out and called for the guards to behead the hatter immediately.
The hatter wasn't worried but his wife was, and stepped in between the guards and her husband. She declared that no one, not even the queen, would be beheading her husband.
The queen took this as direct defiance to her authority as queen. She did not like it at all. So she challenged the hatter's wife to a game of wits. If the queen could ask her a riddle that she could not answer, it would be her, not the hatter, who loses her head.
The hatter begged his wife not to do it, but she didn't listen. She was confident in her ability to answer any riddle. The queen only got to ask three riddles so all she had to do was answer three times. Piece of cake, she told the hatter. So the queen began...
"What 8 letter word can have a letter taken away and it still makes a word. Take another letter away and it still makes a word. Keep on doing that until you have one letter left. What is the word?"
"Easy!" said the hatter's wife. "Starting!"
One riddle down. You could hear a sigh of relief come from the hatter, and us.
"The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?"
"Another easy one, queen! Footsteps!" The hatter's wife was becoming increasingly confident by this point. I remember seeing her puff out her chest a little, as if to say "You will not win."
And then, the queen asked a question that would change everything.
"Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
The hatter's wife looked down. She looked up. She scratched her head, and she crossed her arms. The she turned around, and looked each of us in the eye, pleading for any help.
But none of us knew. The queen knew she had won. And before anyone could act, the guards had the hatter's wife on her knees, bent over a wooden box, her head hanging off the end of it.
We had to hold the hatter back so he didn't lose his head either.
In a second, it was over. The hatter's wife lay on the ground, her head disconnected from her body.
The hatter has never been the same. And to this day, he asks everyone he sees why a raven is like a writing desk. Always searching for the answer that she didn't know.
I'm just a hare, so I don't know much, but I'm not sure if my friend will ever find the answer.
THE END
Author's Note:
Hello! Thank you for reading my story. I hope you liked it. I love prequels and the idea of writing a story that explains why something is the way it is in the original story. So I wanted to write a story that explained why the hatter is mad. I don't know if it ever does explain it, I read Alice in Wonderland and I don't remember reading about it. So hopefully I did a good job. The riddles I used were taken from a website and the link can be found below. Thanks again!
https://www.riddles.com/best-riddles
Bibliography:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).
http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/05/myth-folklore-unit-alice-in-wonderland.html
If I told you that the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you say?
If you were sensible, you would ask me - How? How do you know? How is it going to end? Where did you learn from this?
As human beings, you are curious to a fault and never stop looking for evidence. So why, when my friend the hatter tells people he is mad, do you simply just accept it?
I wonder, have you ever thought to ask him how he knows he's mad? And what happened to make him so?
Well I know what happened the day his brain split in two, and he started speaking in riddles. I'll never forget it actually, and it was quite possibly the worst thing we've ever seen.
Not many people know this, but the hatter used to have a wife. She was just like him, and they went together like two puzzle pieces. They just fit. It's hard to describe it, but if you ever met her, you would know. They were just right for each other.
Before the hatter became... well the hatter, he was quite fun to be around. We all were. In a way, the hatter's wife kept us sane. She was energetic and funny. She lit up a room, and her joy was contagious.
Back then, the hatter wasn't afraid to poke fun at anyone. He constantly made jokes, and teased anyone he could find. And one day, he went too far.
He teased one of the Queen's children, and it became inconsolable and belligerent. The Queen, being the protective mother she is, freaked out and called for the guards to behead the hatter immediately.
The hatter wasn't worried but his wife was, and stepped in between the guards and her husband. She declared that no one, not even the queen, would be beheading her husband.
The queen took this as direct defiance to her authority as queen. She did not like it at all. So she challenged the hatter's wife to a game of wits. If the queen could ask her a riddle that she could not answer, it would be her, not the hatter, who loses her head.
The hatter begged his wife not to do it, but she didn't listen. She was confident in her ability to answer any riddle. The queen only got to ask three riddles so all she had to do was answer three times. Piece of cake, she told the hatter. So the queen began...
"What 8 letter word can have a letter taken away and it still makes a word. Take another letter away and it still makes a word. Keep on doing that until you have one letter left. What is the word?"
"Easy!" said the hatter's wife. "Starting!"
One riddle down. You could hear a sigh of relief come from the hatter, and us.
"The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?"
"Another easy one, queen! Footsteps!" The hatter's wife was becoming increasingly confident by this point. I remember seeing her puff out her chest a little, as if to say "You will not win."
And then, the queen asked a question that would change everything.
"Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
The hatter's wife looked down. She looked up. She scratched her head, and she crossed her arms. The she turned around, and looked each of us in the eye, pleading for any help.
But none of us knew. The queen knew she had won. And before anyone could act, the guards had the hatter's wife on her knees, bent over a wooden box, her head hanging off the end of it.
We had to hold the hatter back so he didn't lose his head either.
In a second, it was over. The hatter's wife lay on the ground, her head disconnected from her body.
The hatter has never been the same. And to this day, he asks everyone he sees why a raven is like a writing desk. Always searching for the answer that she didn't know.
I'm just a hare, so I don't know much, but I'm not sure if my friend will ever find the answer.
THE END
 |
| Raven |
Author's Note:
Hello! Thank you for reading my story. I hope you liked it. I love prequels and the idea of writing a story that explains why something is the way it is in the original story. So I wanted to write a story that explained why the hatter is mad. I don't know if it ever does explain it, I read Alice in Wonderland and I don't remember reading about it. So hopefully I did a good job. The riddles I used were taken from a website and the link can be found below. Thanks again!
https://www.riddles.com/best-riddles
Bibliography:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).
http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/05/myth-folklore-unit-alice-in-wonderland.html
Hi Rhett!
ReplyDeleteWOW! This story was amazing. My jaw literally dropped at the part where the queen wins and the mad hatter's wife is beheaded. A part of me was expecting it considering it was mentioned earlier in the story how the queen wanted to behead the mad hatter, but still I guess I was expecting a happy ending. That was a really good shock factor! Your story is really such a good prequel/origins story for The Mad Hatter. Good job on this!