The Novel ' Alice 's Adventures, Alice Falls Asleep And Into The Curious World Of Wonderland

Late rabbits, talking cats, and dancing cards are just some of the un-natural occurrences that take place in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In today’s society with competing books, such as Harry Potter, these elements in the book may seem like no big deal, but for the time period the book was published, these were anything but normal. This children’s book was first published in 1865 in the United Kingdom; during the Victorian time period, named after Queen Victoria. The book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland represents a satire on the Victorian Era and how people were expected to act, through which Carroll displays an overall theme of growing up.

Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is fundamentally about the growth of the character of Alice. In the Victorian period 1837- 1901, there was a changes in children education and reflexively development of children literature. Therefore when writing Lewis Carroll attempts to put forth a form of education within the text. The story follows Alice who is a seven year old well-mannered victorian girl that stumbles through a rabbit hole into the magical world of Wonderland. Alice takes on the role of the audience viewing Wonderland and its strange inhabitants. It is through language in both conversations with herself and with the characters of wonderland that we see Alice’s journey through wonderland is representative of a child’s education into adulthood.

Issues concerning her size, identity, and her social exchanges with both Wonderland and its creatures spur and characterize Alice’s development towards becoming a young woman.

In 1862, floating upon the river Isis, Charles Dodgson narrated for Alice Liddell and a few others in company his original tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Gliding along underneath the blue sky, Dodgson wove his words into one of the most classic children stories of all time. Thesis: Although Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland may have only begun as a children’s story, many adults have sought to discover the “true meaning” of the novel. Curiosity has led to years of searching and interpretation of the origins of Carroll’s novels, and the symbols inside, developing into theories ranging from practical to nearly impossible, eventually evolving into their own stories in the film industry.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a young girl’s journey down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world where there seems to be no logic. Throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice experiences a variety of bizarre physical changes, causing her to realize she is not only trying to figure out Wonderland but also trying to determine her own identity. After Alice arrives in Wonderland the narrator states, “For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 12). This quotation is the first instance that shows Alice is unsure of her identity. The changes in size that take place when she eats or drinks are the physical signs of her loss of identity.

Many themes are explored when reading Lewis Carrol’s, Alice in Wonderland. Themes of childhood innocence, child abuse, dream, and others. Reading the story, it was quite clear to see one particular theme portrayed through out the book: child to adult progression. Alice in Wonderland is full of experiences that lead Alice to becoming more of herself and that help her grow up. It’s a story of trial, confusion, understanding, and success. And more confusion. Though others might argue that the story was distinctly made for children just to get joy out of funny words, and odd circumstances, the tale has obvious dynamics that confirm the fact of it being a coming of age story.

The society is filled with rules and norms, some that not even make sense. It is difficult to understand it, and for a child it sometimes would be understood as absurd. Perhaps the book’s theme is about how absurd the real world of adulthood is; absurdness and nonsense camouflaged under the label “normal”. For a child going through puberty, the world changes. It is no longer simple and logical. There are new rules to learn and new ways to behave. The confusion and changes one goes through often shakes one to the core, one’s own identity. The German psychologist Erik Eriksson’s eight stages of psychosocial development states that in adolescence one meet the problem identity vs. role confusion One is bound to be confused about one’s role in the society and experiment to find out whom one are. Alice’s confusion about herself is an example of this crisis that often happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, I will say that themes such as puberty and identity crisis goes under one larger theme, growing

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published in England during the year 1865. This was a time where typical Victorian children’s novels and books adhered to an informal but omnipresent set of themes characteristic of their life experiences. Chief among these themes were humility, devotion, the ability to be on time and punctual, and to promote cleanliness in all aspects of life. In short, literature, especially those for children, were designed to teach little girls how to be proper Victorian little girls, holding those themes and morals as priority for real world opportunities and experiences. Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was quite opposed to this literary standard for the time.

Arkia Vanner Mr.Ebarb English IV AP 10 April 2017 The Importance of Societal Rules in Alice’s Identity Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland purposefully highlights the confusion of identity, including the distinction between adults and children, and poses important questions about childhood and growth. Through mid-19th century-normative social mannerisms, Carroll shows two Alices: the Alice that is being groomed for coming up in society and the Alice that is a fully formed person outside the demands of the external world. Carroll’s maneuvers between England and Wonderland are subtle causing the reader to question what it means to be a child in a society where they are preened to be proper. In Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,

The inventive world of Wonderland and Alice’s journey in to her own imagination is more then merely a children s story. Looking deep at the symbols and structure of the story one can see that it becomes more complex and abstract as Alice gets deeper and deeper in her journey in Wonderland. Lewis Carol wrote the book in 1876 and Disney produced its own animated version of Alice in Wonderland no more then twenty years ago. The Disney production aimed at a younger audience, shows Wonderland as a very colorful and vibrant place, full of flowers, trees and a majestic garden of wonder and glory. Although Disney is successful at doing that, it fails in showing the hidden aspects of the story, the aspects of the novel that need to be dug into to

By examining Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it is evident that this bildungsroman novel aims to educate child and adult readers alike on finding one’s identity. A common motif found in the bildungsroman genre is the maturation of a single protagonist, who undergoes moral development through experiential learning. As Alice happens upon the inciting incident of entering Wonderland, her naivety and childlike sensibility is tested. Wonderland acts as a realm of transformation, where the logic of her childhood reality is of no use. It is once Alice’s logic fails her, that she embarks on a journey of introspection. The Mad Tea Party functions as a climatic point in Alice’s formation of her identity. In the ensuing chapters, Alice grows from an immature seven-year-old to a young girl who possesses a sense of autonomy and self-identity. She understands the value of communication, self-control, and the necessity to adapt as she maneuvers her way through episodic challenges.

Carroll was considered to be upper middle class; therefore, he was well educated, attending Oxford. In the academic field of mathematics, Carroll worked in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra, mathematical logic and recreational mathematics, writing many books under his real name, Dodgson. Incorporating logic into to his novels, Carroll used a new approach at writing. This allowed him to make the reader think about what they had just read and understand it to its fullest extent. Published in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Meyer Spacks concludes, “Carroll's world of fantasy is most profoundly, in its semantic aspects at least, the sort of world for which such a logician as Charles Dodgson might yearn: a world of truth and order.” In addition to being a mathematician and logician he also found a great interest in photography. In 1856, Henry Liddell, the new dean of the Church arrived, bringing with him his family, consisting of three sisters: Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. They would later serve as an inspiration for Carroll. When he was with them, Carroll would often invent stories as entertainment for them. The famous that we have come to know today is based on Alice Liddell. Carroll uses aspects of her life, that of a child in order to create Wonderland. Author of Lewis Carroll: Overview, J.S. Bratton, shares his opinion, “In the Alice books the appearance of a divine

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are both widely thought to be books filled of nonsense by adults because adults search for meaning in the wrong places. People are taught from a young age to analyze books in a “traditional” way, which is identifying the five stages of plot (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution) and to look at the story one part at a time, slowly analyzing the whole book. This method becomes ingrained in their minds and they do it subconsciously. This frame of thought causes most adults to be unable to see the true meaning of Lewis Carroll’s two books, but at the same time helps adults obtain more than originally intended: “Although we can never hope to explain fully what these books mean or how they have secured their high place in the world’s literature, our efforts in this regard can yield many important insights about them and about their meanings for us,” (Rackin, 18). Adults are also taught there is always main plot that slowly builds towards the end, revealing a central theme. But in these books there is no main plot and Carroll uses the central theme to go back and give meaning to the rest of the events in the books. The themes of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are conveyed through the structure of the book, rather than the theme. The theme must also be read with the perspective with that of a child rather than an adult to fully understand these books.

In the novel, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), a young teenager in the midst of the transition between childhood and becoming an adult stumbles around in a very confusing world. 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

The adventure starts with the appearance of a seemingly ordinary, white rabbit. She soon finds out that it is no ordinary rabbit, as she observes it wearing human clothes and talking to itself. Intrigued by the strange rabbit, she decides to follow it to a rabbit hole. She decides to jump down the hole, and from here, her journey begins. In this unusual world that is Wonderland, she meets a lots of different strange things. Changing your shape and height is part of everyday life, and talking animals is as normal as non-talking ones. Alice, having a hard time comprehending the bizarre situation which she is in, begins to try to find her way out of Wonderland. The longer she stays there, the more she confused she is. At one point, the ridiculousness and absurdness is too much for her. She snaps back to reality, and finds out it was all a