In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the animal characters are very strange. In audience’s expectation, Lewis Carroll was supposed to guide Alice throughout the traditional fairytale world she has created, but instead they were negative influences on this child. Do the animal characters in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland disobey the animal characters in traditional fairytales? The animals in Alice argue with her, confuse her, and tell her upsetting stories instead of guiding her through the fairytale world she has created. This is parallel to Del Toro’s Pan Labyrinth because the main animal characters, fairytales, faun, and paleman, have the weird physical features. It was really sickening to see them. They also have very outlandish behavior. This applied to Lewis Carroll’s book because he used the animals in an unusual way. For example, The Cheshire-Cat’s body vanished but the face was still there. Other example is a mouse walking by Alice. Why did he decide to disobey the audience’s expectation about children’s literature? In my analysis, Lewis Carroll showed that everyone has their own point of view. He used animal characters to be pessimistic influence on Alice. This is weird because Lewis Carroll knows that the children look up on animal characters as their role model. What is he trying to do with the children? Is he trying to send admonition to audience? When Alice looked at the rabbit, she never had seen any rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it. She began to wonder and decided to go after him. When Alice tried to look down and find out what she was coming to, it was very dim to see anything. I believe that if there is a dark background, it is a sign of being cheerless. S... ... middle of paper ... ...rld. He used Caterpillar’s misbehavior by doing hookah in front of Alice to send an urgent message to audience that children will see them all them. My opinion about Lewis Carroll’s writing is a moral. He used the animal characters to disobey the audience’s expectation. At the same time, I believed that the audience learned that the children have to deal what they see in their childhood. Once they deal with this, they are more likely to be prepared for whatever comes into their lives. Right now, the world is becoming out of control. More adults are doing weed, hookah, drinking, and swearing in front of children.. My prediction for this is it will continue to grow problems with the children because the population is increasing rapidly. Lewis Carroll is sending an urgent message to all the audience to be prepared for their children to see a lot of adulthood problems.
Of course there is no sure way to prove that Carroll did not intend any deeper meaning into the story, after all, he was a mathematician and a man of great knowledge of children (19th Century Literature Criticism 105), but lets take a look at the most obvious fact – the time, place and audience of the original story of Alice in Wonderland. Here are the words of Lewis Carroll as he recalls that day: Full many a year has slipped away, since that “golden afternoon” that gave thee birth, but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday – the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces, hungry for news of fairyland, and who would not he say ‘nay’ to: from whose lips ‘Tell us a story, please,’ had all the stern immutability of Fate!
Margaret Wise Brown was truly fascinated by animals, and she understood children’s attraction to animals. Tellingly, when Brown reflects on her childhood she mentions her “thirty-six rabbits, two squirrels…a collie dog, and two Peruvian hens, a Belgian hare, seven fish, and a wild robin who came back every spring” (Days Before Now). From this information about Brown, one understands where her love of animals originated--her childhood. Additionally, animals were kind to her and did not restrict or belittle Brown the way some individuals did regularly. Brown was allowed to have constant interaction with animals, which proved to be influential in her writing career. Overall, Margaret Wise Brown used numerous animals, especially rabbits because of her love for creatures and the understanding she possessed of children’s love of and interest with animals.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about a little girl who comes into contact with unpredictable, illogical, basically mad world of Wonderland by following the White Rabbit into a huge rabbit – hole. Everything she experiences there challenges her perception and questions common sense. This extraordinary world is inhabited with peculiar, mystical and anthropomorphic creatures that constantly assault Alice which makes her to question her fundamental beliefs and suffer an identity crisis. Nevertheless, as she woke up from “such a curious dream” she could not help but think “as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been ”.
When thinking about male characters, one would have to also include the male animal characters. During the time Carroll wrote this book, some would say that he bace the character on real people. The animals that portray different men that Lewis Carroll knew in the Victorian era. One could not talk about the men without including every male character . So first let’s start talking about the one character that leads Alice down the rabbit hole in the first place.
Lewis Carroll, world renowned author, known most for his tale of literary nonsense published almost a century and a half ago, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Several conditions of Carroll’s life molded and shaped his writing. Evidence from Carroll’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ,one can conclude that Carroll has engraved moments from his life, people around him ,as well as his beliefs and love of logic into his story, considering these are the things that Alice Liddell would recognize.
The gender roles change from the original to the remake. The original Alice role is defined as a young girl who is able to explore her curiosity, but she is constrained by her feminine characteristics. Alice being a young girl is portrayed as helpless in many situations throughout her journey. The characters of Wonderland offer her assistance, but she remains most times crying by herself. Alice’s character clearly shows the innocence and virtue American society attached to girls roles in the
There are some critics that argue that Lewis Carroll wasn’t highly religious if religious at all. A popular topic relating to Lewis Carroll’s religious practices is whether or not he expressed any of his beliefs in his widely known story Alice in Wonderland. Hidden deep in the contexts of Alice in Wonderland, it’s clear that Alice in Wonderland is an allegory to the Christian Bible and contains multiple references to some biblical themes, characters, or events. Whether intentional or not, Lewis Carroll wrote characters, paragraph, and even chapters that mirror some of the most well-known scenes in the Bible.
The advantage of this is that children would find it easy to recognise the characters while reading. The animals in the story have been caricatured so well that while reading the story, you may feel sceptic towards animals around you. You may suspect that they are listening your
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland follows the story of young Alice trapped in the world of Wonderland after falling down through a rabbit-hole. The rabbit-hole which is filled with bookshelves, maps, and other objects foreshadows the set of rules, the ones Alice is normally accustomed to, will be defied in Wonderland. This conflict between her world and Wonderland becomes evident shortly after her arrival as evinced by chaos in “Pool of Tears” and Alice brings up the main theme of the book “was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I am not the same, the next question is who am I?” (Carroll 18). After Alice fails to resolve her identity crisis using her friends, Alice says “Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here til I’m somebody else” (Carroll 19). Hence in the beginning, Alice is showing her dependency on others to define her identity. Nevertheless when her name is called as a witness in chapter 12, Alice replies “HERE!” without any signs of hesitation (Carroll 103). Close examination of the plot in Alice in Wonderland reveals that experiential learning involving sizes leads Alice to think logically and rationally. Alice then attempts to explore Wonderland analytically and becomes more independent as the outcome. With these qualities, Alice resolves her identity crisis by recognizing Wonderland is nothing but a dream created by her mind.
A troubled childhood was also something that you can see influenced his writing. Lewis was the oldest in his family but most of the attention was toward the younger siblings. In his books he has a negative attitude toward babies which give credit to the idea that when he was a child his baby brother and sisters received most of the attention. “Neither Charles Dodgson or Lewis Carroll had many good things to say about babies. Throw them away. Tie them in Knots and send them into the wilderness” (www.alice-in-wonderland).
Ultimately, Romanticism is responsible for transforming the purpose of children’s literature and, as a result, society's image of children. Thus, helping to establish the importance of the imagination. Through its themes of romanticism, Carroll crafts a story that is anti-didactic by its very nature. The innocence and imagination of childhood offers redemption to fallen adulthood.
As these assorted items fly by, it represents the idea of childhood also flying past as a child is forced to devote themselves to proper manners and focus on always being perfect, supported by Alice’s attempt at curtseying during this section. This obviously does not help her situation, instead resulting her in experiencing a malaise feeling, however, it is how she was ‘trained’ to act back in the real society and this action (alongside other pointless actions) have been enforced in her brain to the point where they are almost instinctual. This results in Victorian society members at the time being encouraged to ruminate over the nature of their own strange etiquettes. Carroll appears to be mocking this system of logic through the clear uselessness of this system (in regard to how only one-person benefits – the Hatter) yet how absolute each character is in their belief that it is the correct method to follow. While the vast majority of characters in this story follow along with these seemingly redundant rules, Alice opposes them and, as her journey progresses, fights harder against them, becoming increasingly more obnoxious to counter the rudeness of characters who call her out for not fully understanding their customs. This relates to how children cannot be contained and
One of the main purposes for writing Alice in Wonderland was not only to show the difficulties of communication between children and adults. In this story, almost every adult Alice talked to did not understand her. At times she messed up what they were saying completely as well, which many times stick true to real life circumstances. This book shows that kids and adults are on completely separate pages on an everlasting story. Carroll points out that sometimes children, like Alice, have a hard time dealing with the transition from childhood to adulthood, 'growing up.' Alice in Wonderland is just a complicated way of showing this fact. Lewis Carroll's ways with words is confusing, entertaining, serious, and highly unique all at the same time. And it's safe to say that it would be difficult to replicate such and imaginative technique ever again (Long 72).
The characters in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are more than whimsical ideas brought to life by Lewis Carroll. These characters, ranging from silly to rude, portray the adults in Alice Liddell’s life. The parental figures in Alice’s reality, portrayed in Alice in Wonderland, are viewed as unintellectual figures through their behaviors and their interactions with one another. Alice’s interactions with the characters of Wonderland reflect her struggles with adults in real life. Naturally curious as she is, Alice asks questions to learn from the adults.
Alice in Wonderland belongs to the nonsense genre, and even if most of what happens to Alice is quite illogical, the main character is not. “The Alice books are, above all, about growing up” (Kincaid, page 93); indeed, Alice starts her journey as a scared little girl, however, at the end of what we discover to be just a dream, she has entered the adolescence phase with a new way to approach the mentally exhausting and queer Wonderland. It is important to consider the whole story when analyzing the growth of the character, because the meaning of an event or a sentence is more likely to mean what it truly looks like rather than an explanation regarding subconscious and Freudian interpretations. Morton states “that the books should possess any unity of purpose seems on the surface unlikely” (Morton, page 509), but it’s better to consider the disconnected narrative and the main character separately, since the girl doesn’t belong to Wonderland, which is, as Morton says, with no intrinsic unity. Whereas, there are a few key turning points where it is possible to see how Alice is changing, something that is visible throughout her journey. Carroll wants to tell the story of a girl who has to become braver in order to contend with challenges like the pool made by her own tears, or assertive characters, like the Queen.