Alice's Adventures in Darwinism and the Realm of Child Versus Adult

Is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as absurd and nonsensical as it seems to be—without any traces of morals hiding underneath the bizarre shaped tea cups and crooked smiles? Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, written by an English author in 1865 under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, contains obscurities that leave people uncertain due to the nonsense. The novel holds many obscurities, such as a disappearing Cheshire Cat, a personified rabbit, and a caterpillar who smokes from a hookah. These characters hold a common feature of madness, yet the nonsense of this novel relates to the nonsense of Lowell High School, a public school that piles bricks of pressure on their students leading them to madness. Although, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland contains a series of puzzles that seem unsolvable, it symbolizes a strong foundation that helps Lowell High School ninth graders gain knowledge about surviving the competitive school.

In the novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the main character, Alice, undergoes quite a change. During the time the novel was published, parts of the world were in the victorian era. The Queen at the time was Queen Victoria, in which the era was named after. During this era, knowledge, class and reason were greatly valued, and stressed. This time period ended in the year of Queen Victoria’s death. Throughout the novel, there are many ways that show how Alice begins to understand the world in adult terms, matures, and grows.

Alice in Wonderland has been a beloved children’s classic for over a century and was originally told to entertain a close friend’s child, Alice Liddell; yet, it has now become one of the most analyzed children’s stories with its many paradoxes. While it could be acclaimed to feminism with its many intense female characters that often illustrate poor decisions or historical with its Victorian era time frame, the two that best fit are psychoanalytical and existentialism. Via these schools of literary criticism, one can make a complete picture of a young girl in an irrational adult world.

Alice and the the other creatures within the world of Wonderland mimic the ideas of society and their many flaws. Carroll uses many scenes within his story to provide roles for each and every character, so they could personify characters in the real world. In many instances Alice attempts to understand these individuals living within the world they call Wonderland. But like any other, Alice finds the differences between them to be too great and rejects them just like how people in the real world reject the ideas of others based on how they were raised. Alice even though she is a fresh young mind, she still already has nurtured ideals within her and it prevents her from learning from these character’s flaws. If Alice could understand that these flaws were a projection of the issues in today’s world, she could understand how Carroll’s characters are a perfect representation of today’s

The transformations that Alice experiences throughout Lewis Carroll’s, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, display the metaphorical change the protagonist goes through from the stage of childhood to adulthood and the continued struggle to understand her identity. These changes are experienced after Alice follows a white rabbit down his hole and into an incredible world known as Wonderland. This place, although completely fictitious, represents an alternate world to the main character that is unexplainable to herself and the real world. During her time in this world, she faces many adversities between changing sizes or being on trial that confuse her throughout the story. At the end, Alice learns

Despite her unfamiliar surroundings, Alice attempts to interpret everything around her from a logical point of view due to how mature she is for her age. However, she is still a girl who is only seven years old and this allows the maturity that she tries so hard to show to fade away. She is in a state of disarray about who she is because of “her developing sense of the difference between childhood and adulthood” (“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” 28). At the beginning of the text, Alice tries to read her older sister's book, only to become bored because of its lack of childish appeals: “‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’” (Carroll 1). She wants to be more like her older sister, but she does have the mind of a child which is why she grows bored and begins her adventure to wonderland in the first place. Also, Alice eats or drinks something that she finds many times throughout her adventure, and this shows her lack of maturity: only a child would pick something up that says “Drink me” on it and not think of the consequences at all before drinking it. Throughout Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll emphasizes the conflict between Alice's desire to be an adult and grow up and her subconscious wanting to remain the child

Carroll uses insecurities and the messages of chaos and death to express how bewildering and complicated life is. Feeling frustrated with her inability to control her form, Alice's battle represents the insecurities of puberty. Carroll's novel contains the recurring message of chaos: how bewildering and complicated life is. The only thing Alice can count on is frustration and ureliability. Alice goes through many life-endangering incidents, yet death never materializes. Carroll uses the interesting story to draw in readers and get them to see his point of view without anyone noticing it. Using Alice as a relatable vessel, Carroll projects his ideas from her personality. Alice;s Adventures in Wonderland is a fascinating story that encapsulates

Carroll intended for the purpose of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to be a children’s book and therefore probably did not intend for adults to scrutinize his work. Gilead explains Carroll’s book as “merely playful entertainment” (288) for children. Therefore, his recovery was short, potentially in light of the fact that a child does not need this type of recovery, for they already have their imagination and innocence intact. But as Gilead states, “writing for children thus permits the adult to recuperate the familiar and to link slippery modern culture to the lost wholeness and stability of an imagined (and largely imaginary) past” (288). Gilead is saying that although this is children’s fantasy, if adults were to read it, the whole narrative

Often, many things in life are hidden in plain sight. One must have the senses to see them, like in Jesus' parables. They are ordinary stories that have hidden messages of God and his Kingdom, visible to those who look carefully enough. The same could be said about Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a tale of a young girl in a nonsensical world. The novel comprises of a whimsical charm and a feeling of absurd madness. Early critics even considered it nonsense, unworthy of serious critiquing. But underlying all the nonsense and illogic, there is more that can be taken from the story, even from a psychoanalytical point of view. Carroll very cleverly uses literary devices, specifically satire, paradox, and personification to put some sense into the seemingly nonsensical world of Wonderland.

   Lewis Carroll's Wonderland is a queer little universe where a not so ordinary girl is faced with the contradicting nature of the fantastic creatures who live there. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a child's struggle to survive in the condescending world of adults. The conflict between child and adult gives direction to Alice's adventures and controls all the outstanding features of the work- Alice's character, her relationship with other characters, and the dialogue. " Alice in Wonderland is on one hand so nonsensical that children sometimes feel ashamed to have been interested in anything so silly (Masslich 107)."

Analyzing Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as dreams isn’t terribly difficult, given that they both actually are dreams, as each ends with her waking up. Also, typically the ‘hero’ character gives way to suppressed impulses, or undisclosed desires. So it only seems fair that Alice, as the heroine, is lost in Wonderland, acting as a symbol for our own need for freedom- freedom from conformity and expectations that come with everyday life [Beckman]. Alice, under normal circumstances, is a very polite little girl with impeccable manners in Victorian England living; however in Wonderland, she’s found to be rather rude which makes sense given that she is unfamiliar to the socio-cultural norms. She realizes this and learns that she must adapt to these changes if she wants to get anywhere in wonderland [Manton]. In analysis, repressed emotions are difficult to examine accurately. And so the unique and perfectly strange nature of this story has often been explained by saying that whoever wrote it must’ve been a druggy or a weirdo, which, to an extent, I suppose is true. Lewis Carroll, even as an adult, retained a child-like persona, which may have allowed him to think like a child and prove stellar at writing children's books. Carroll is thought to have based the female characters of his novels on

Finding your identity as a maturing human, is something many people struggle with. Imagine you are a young girl, soon tumbling down a hole to a whole new world. Lewis Carroll shares the story of a girl named Alice. The book is a fun and creative story, but shares the struggles of a young girl finding her identity. The style of Lewis Carroll is often described as symbolic. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is written using many symbols. The symbols show children’s identity changes while entering adulthood. The symbols of the garden and the caterpillar 's mushroom, fantasized characters, and the rabbit hole in Wonderland lead Alice to her true identity.

Lewis Carroll 's novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” creates a world that is enforced by extremely foreign and unusual principles and rules that are ordinary to the characters in Wonderland. Alice appears to be odd and unusual compared to the rest of Wonderland’s characters. Her sense of self is tested throughout this novel.

During this time, Carroll occupied himself by tutoring private pupils and spent almost four hours per day lecturing his classes. He also begin his contributions to The Comic Times, later called The Train, which displayed several of his poems. It was during this contribution that he felt the need to create a nom de plum, which became the widely known name of Lewis Carroll. At the same time, Carroll began his relationship with the Liddell girls, one of them by the name ‘Alice’ who would become the basis for the renowned main character of the Alice in Wonderland stories. It was Carroll’s particular fondness with young girls that created much controversy even while he lived. In 1856, after Alice Liddell begged Carroll to write the Alice stories down, Carroll decided to take the story to the publisher Macmillan who immediately enjoyed the story and published it. In the same year, Carroll also took up the art of photography, many of his subjects being young girls in which he expressed a “beauty,” a state of physical perfection found in the human form as it existed. This new hobby, along with his passion for theatre and the rebelliousness his works contained against the strict Victorian era, played a part in the confrontation and questioning of morality to the author. Lewis, not fond of publicity, avoided the public and the questions that came at him. Likewise, As Carroll’s fame grew, juxtapose to it was a growing mythology about the author which soon became a false reality rather than myth. During December of 1897, Lewis Carroll, as he usually would do, took a trip down to Guildford to spend Christmas with his sisters. However, a sudden attack of influenze prevented his travels back to the north. A slight horseness turned into the next morning a serious case of illness, and in less than a

Alice in Lewis Carrol’s Adventures in Wonderland is an inquisitve, logical, and forthright young girl. Somehow, these traits help the author inspire his target audience consisting of children of Alice’s age group. Carrol’s devises two types of setting, namely reality world and wonderland, to show