Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
An analysis
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/alice/canalysis.html
Lewis Carroll was
the pseudonym of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer
in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford,
who lived from 1832 to 1898. Carroll’s physical deformities, partial deafness,
and irrepressible stammer made him an unlikely candidate for producing one of
the most popular and enduring children’s fantasies in the English language.
Carroll’s unusual appearance caused him to behave awkwardly around other
adults, and his students at Oxford
saw him as a stuffy and boring teacher. He held strict religious beliefs,
serving as a deacon in the Anglican Church for many years and briefly
considering becoming a minister. Underneath
Carroll’s awkward exterior, however, lay a brilliant and imaginative artist. A
gifted amateur photographer, he took numerous portraits of children throughout
his adulthood. Carroll’s keen grasp of mathematics and logic inspired the
linguistic humor and witty wordplay in his stories. Additionally, his unique
understanding of children’s minds allowed him to compose imaginative fiction
that appealed to young people.
Carroll felt shy and reserved around adults
but became animated and lively around children. His crippling stammer melted
away in the company of children as he told them his elaborately nonsensical
stories. […] As an adult, Carroll continued to prefer the companionship of children
to adults and tended to favor little girls. Over the course of his lifetime he
made numerous child friends whom he wrote to frequently and often mentioned in
his diaries.
In 1856, Carroll became close with the
Liddell children and met the girl who would become the inspiration for Alice,
the protagonist of his two most famous books […] During
their frequent afternoon boat trips on the river, Carroll told the Liddells fanciful tales. Alice quickly became Carroll’s favorite of
the three girls, and he made her the subject of the stories that would later
became Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Almost ten years after first meeting the Liddells,
Carroll compiled the stories and submitted the completed manuscript for
publication.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland received mostly negative reviews when first
published in 1865. […] Despite the
book’s negative reception, Carroll proposed a sequel to his publisher in 1866
and set to work writing Through the Looking-Glass. By the time the
second book reached publication in 1871, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
had found an appreciative readership. Over time, Carroll’s combination of
sophisticated logic, social satire, and pure fantasy would make the book a
classic for children and adults alike. Critics eventually recognized the
literary merits of both texts, and celebrated authors and philosophers ranging
from James Joyce to Ludwig Wittgenstein praised Carroll’s stories.
[…] Carroll’s sudden break with the Liddell
family in the early 1860s has led to a great deal of speculation over the
nature of his relationship with Alice Liddell. […] However, no concrete evidence exists that
Carroll behaved inappropriately in his numerous friendships with children. […]
Carroll’s feelings of intense nostalgia for
the simple pleasures of childhood caused him to feel deep discomfort in the
presence of adults. In the company of children, Carroll felt understood and
could temporarily forget the loss of innocence that he associated with his own
adulthood. Ironically, Carroll mourned this loss again and again as he watched
each of his child friends grow away from him as they became older. […] The
sentiment of fleeting happiness pervades Carroll’s seemingly lighthearted
fantasies and infuses the Alice
books with melancholy and loss.
CHARACTERS
Alice
Alice is a sensible prepubescent girl from a
wealthy English family who finds herself in a strange world ruled by
imagination and fantasy. Alice
feels comfortable with her identity and has a strong sense that her environment
is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent rules and features. Alice’s familiarity with
the world has led one critic to describe her as a “disembodied intellect.” Alice displays great
curiosity and attempts to fit her diverse experiences into a clear
understanding of the world.
Alice approaches Wonderland as an anthropologist,
but maintains a strong sense of noblesse oblige that comes with her class
status. She has confidence in her social position, education, and the Victorian
virtue of good manners. Alice
has a feeling of entitlement, particularly when comparing herself to Mabel,
whom she declares has a “poky little house,” and no toys. Additionally, she
flaunts her limited information base with anyone who will listen and becomes
increasingly obsessed with the importance of good manners as she deals with the
rude creatures of Wonderland. Alice
maintains a superior attitude and behaves with solicitous indulgence toward
those she believes are less privileged.
The tension of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
emerges when Alice’s
fixed perspective of the world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world
of Wonderland. Alice’s
fixed sense of order clashes with the madness she finds in Wonderland. The
White Rabbit challenges her perceptions of class when he mistakes her for a
servant, while the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Pigeon challenge Alice’s notions of urbane
intelligence with an unfamiliar logic that only makes sense within the context
of Wonderland. Most significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of
good manners by constantly assaulting her with dismissive rudeness. Alice’s fundamental beliefs face challenges at every turn,
and as a result Alice
suffers an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as she perceives
her sense of order collapsing all around her. Alice must choose between retaining her
notions of order and assimilating into Wonderland’s nonsensical rules.
The Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is
unique among Wonderland creatures. Threatened by no one, it maintains a cool,
grinning outsider status. The Cheshire Cat has insight
into the workings of Wonderland as a whole. Its calm explanation to Alice that to be in Wonderland is to be “mad” reveals a
number of points that do not occur to Alice
on her own. First, the Cheshire Cat points out that
Wonderland as a place has a stronger cumulative effect than any of its
citizens. Wonderland is ruled by nonsense, and as a result, Alice’s normal behavior becomes inconsistent
with its operating principles, so Alice herself becomes mad in the context of
Wonderland. Certainly, Alice’s
burning curiosity to absorb everything she sees in Wonderland sets her apart
from the other Wonderland creatures, making her seem mad in comparison.
The Queen of
Hearts
As the ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is the character that Alice must inevitably
face to figure out the puzzle of Wonderland. In a sense, the Queen of Hearts is
literally the heart of Alice’s
conflict. Unlike many of the other characters in Wonderland, the Queen of
Hearts is not as concerned with nonsense and perversions of logic as she is
with absolute rule and execution. In Wonderland, she is a singular force of
fear who even dominates the King of Hearts. In the Queen’s presence, Alice finally gets a
taste of true fear, even though she understands that the Queen of Hearts is
merely a playing card. The Gryphon later informs Alice that the Queen never actually executes
anyone she sentences to death, which reinforces the fact that the Queen of Hearts’s power lies in her rhetoric. The Queen becomes
representative of the idea that Wonderland is devoid of substance.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Tragic
and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, Alice
goes through a variety of absurd physical changes. The discomfort she feels at
never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes that occur during
puberty. Alice
finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration, and
sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a comfortable
physical size. In Chapter I, she becomes upset when she keeps finding herself
too big or too small to enter the garden. In Chapter V, she loses control over
specific body parts when her neck grows to an absurd length. These constant
fluctuations represent the way a child may feel as her body grows and changes
during puberty.
Life as a
Meaningless Puzzle
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series
of puzzles that seem to have no clear solutions, which imitates the ways that
life frustrates expectations. Alice
expects that the situations she encounters will make a certain kind of sense,
but they repeatedly frustrate her ability to figure out Wonderland. Alice tries to understand
the Caucus race, solve the Mad Hatter’s riddle, and understand the Queen’s
ridiculous croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles and
challenges presented to Alice
have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games
of logic. Alice learns that she cannot expect to
find logic or meaning in the situations that she encounters, even when they
appear to be problems, riddles, or games that would normally have solutions
that Alice
would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about the ways that
life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even when problems
seem familiar or solvable.
Death as a
Constant and Underlying Menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in
which she risks death, and while these threats never materialize, they suggest
that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
as a present and possible outcome. Death appears in Chapter I, when the
narrator mentions that Alice
would say nothing of falling off of her own house, since it would likely kill
her. Alice
takes risks that could possibly kill her, but she never considers death as a
possible outcome. Over time, she starts to realize that her experiences in
Wonderland are far more threatening than they appear to be. As the Queen
screams “Off with its head!” she understands that Wonderland may not merely be
a ridiculous realm where expectations are repeatedly frustrated. Death may be a
real threat, and Alice
starts to understand that the risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd
after all.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts,
or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major
themes.
Dream
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alice’s
dream, so that the characters and phenomena of the real world mix with elements
of Alice’s
unconscious state. The dream motif explains the abundance of nonsensical and
disparate events in the story. As in a dream, the narrative follows the dreamer
as she encounters various episodes in which she attempts to interpret her
experiences in relationship to herself and her world. Though Alice’s experiences lend themselves to
meaningful observations, they resist a singular and coherent interpretation.
Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that
the only reliable aspect of Wonderland that she can count on is that it will
frustrate her expectations and challenge her understanding of the natural order
of the world. In Wonderland, Alice
finds that her lessons no longer mean what she thought, as she botches her
multiplication tables and incorrectly recites poems she had memorized while in
Wonderland. Even Alice’s
physical dimensions become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically
throughout the story. Wonderland frustrates Alice’s desires to fit her experiences in a
logical framework where she can make sense of the relationship between cause
and effect.
Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, making use of puns and playing on multiple
meanings of words throughout the text. Carroll invents words and expressions
and develops new meanings for words. Alice’s
exclamation “Curious and curiouser!” suggests that
both her surroundings and the language she uses to describe them expand beyond
expectation and convention. Anything is possible in Wonderland, and Carroll’s
manipulation of language reflects this sense of unlimited possibility.
Curious, Nonsense, and Confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to
describe phenomena she has trouble explaining. Though the words are generally
interchangeable, she usually assigns curious and confusing to
experiences or encounters that she tolerates. She endures is the experiences
that are curious or confusing, hoping to gain a clearer picture of how that
individual or experience functions in the world. When Alice declares something to be nonsense,
as she does with the trial in Chapter XII, she rejects or criticizes the
experience or encounter.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or
colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Garden
Nearly every object in Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland functions as a symbol, but nothing clearly represents one
particular thing. The symbolic resonances of Wonderland objects are generally
contained to the individual episode in which they appear. Often the symbols
work together to convey a particular meaning. The garden may symbolize the
Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and innocence that Alice is not permitted to access. On a more
abstract level, the garden may simply represent the experience of desire, in
that Alice
focuses her energy and emotion on trying to attain it. The two symbolic
meanings work together to underscore Alice’s
desire to hold onto her feelings of childlike innocence that she must
relinquish as she matures.
The
Caterpillar’s Mushroom
Like the garden, the Caterpillar’s mushroom
also has multiple symbolic meanings. Some readers and critics view the
Caterpillar as a sexual threat, its phallic shape a symbol of sexual virility.
The Caterpillar’s mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice must master the properties of the
mushroom to gain control over her fluctuating size, which represents the bodily
frustrations that accompany puberty. Others view the mushroom as a psychedelic
hallucinogen that compounds Alice’s
surreal and distorted perception of Wonderland.