Alice In Wonderland Essay Example For Students

Alice In Wonderland Essay As we read Alices Adventures in Wonderland and The Island of Dr. Moreau, we enter into two unique worlds of imagination. Both Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells describe lands of intrigue and mystery. We follow Alice and Prendick into two different worlds where animals speak, evolution is tested, and reality is bent until it nearly breaks. It is the masterminds of Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells that take these worlds of fantasy and make them realistic. How do these two great authors make the unbelievable believable? Both Alices Adventures in Wonderland and The Island of Dr. Moreau float in between a dream world and reality, which makes the real seem unbelievable and the unbelievable seem real. However, with a more in-depth search, the adult reader can find Carroll may have indeed implanted a theme relative to the confusion Alice goes through as well as the reader. In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll uses not only his love for children and logic but his linguistic playfulness to create a story in order to show the psyche of a child. Moreover, Carroll makes fun of the way Victorian children were raised. In the nineteenth century people were expected to behave according to a set of rules and morals. Carrolls nonsensical behavior of his characters can be seen as making fun of the way children were forced to behave and their rationale. Alices Adventures in Wonderland overall is contradicting the standard way childrens literature was written. As one can see, the story of Alice takes its reader through many different levels. With the lovable creation of a fantastical world, Carroll invites his readers on a nonsensical yet familiar journey of the questioning of identity by child yearning to take the step into adulthood prematurely, enabling him to entertain while simultaneously satirizing the Victorian Era. Alices Adventures in Wonderland begins with Alice sitting beside her sister commenting, what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations Carroll 3. Alices narrow point of view will now begin to raise fundamental questions in her head about who she is. Alice has reached the stage of development where the world appears explainable and unambiguous where, paradoxically, curiosity is wedded to the ignorant faith in the sanity of things qtd. In Otten 50. Alices curiosity will proceed to carry her on a complete rebirth in order to question the inevitable step from childhood to adulthood. It seems to her that she is quite the young adult. This is not such an unfamiliar thought as it is quite usual for a young child to want to behave as an adult. Her journey will sure enough challenge her belief of who she is. This journey begins when she found herself falling down a very deep well Carroll 5. By falling down this hole, Alice is acting as a father. In hitting the bottom of the well she has moved on to the fetal stage. The first problem Alice encounters is finding a way to fit through the little door so small that she could not even fit her head through the doorway. She soon find a bottle labeled drink me. The wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry At this point, Alice is still behaving the way a proper Victorian child would conduct themselves in the Victorian period. She must find a way to exit the womb she is in so she can question the world she exists in. Thus, she compromises to drink whats in the bottle causing her to shrink in size. This is the beginning of what the reader will see as Alices way of questioning her identity. Hemingway Fathers And Sons EssayOne of the numerous rules which governed a proper Victorian ladys behavior was against cutting. Alice encounters this rule at the feast given for her when she becomes a queen in Through the Looking Glass4. Clearly, Carroll is poking fun at etiquette here both through the punning of the term to cut as well as the ridiculous bowing of the leg of mutton. The Lobster Quadrille that Alice encounters in Alices Adventures in Wonderland is a parody of the quadrille, a dance that was used to open nearly every fashionable ball at the time that the book was written and published. The Mock Turtle and Gryphons mad romp can hardly be associated to the politeness the original dance had5. Thus, again Carroll points out the stupidity of a social protocol. Another point Carroll makes is that Victorian children were expected to behave at all times. When Alice is at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, Carroll parodies this sort of rule and the expected behavior by having Alice talk back to the King6. Merely allowing Alice to question the authority of the King and point out the stupidity of his rules he is pointing out the stupidity of contemporary standards set by the time, otherwise symbolized as the King. These scenarios perhaps symbolize the authors hopeless struggle in his own quest to fight between the simplicity of childhood and the stage in adulthood in which one realizes the actual chaotic and ridiculous standard of living Chang 1. More so, the absurdity of the Victorian Era is comparable to that of Wonderland. Alices Adventures in Wonderland is one of the worlds most translated books, and Carroll ranks among one of the most quoted authors. The characters he created have lived in the imaginations of his audience. Lewis Carroll has often times been described as the master of nonsense. Although this is true, Carrolls sense of humor has been proven that it was not just to entertain. The creations of many of his poems and books are the results of the struggles he faced throughout his life. His incorporation of logic and puzzles, puns, rules and anarchy elaborate the main point of his stories. Thus, a single interpretation of Alices Adventures in Wonderland is the battle between bridging from childhood to adulthood. With a simple overview, Carroll truly fulfilled that function in his writings. He seems to bring out the imagination and childhood in all his readers. It is obvious Carroll also found the rules and obligations of the time were ridiculous as he satires them throughout most of his works. Thus, the Alice books have provided the world with an inexhaustible fairy tale which has achieved a purity that is almost unique in a period so cluttered and cumbered qtd. In Kelly 141.