Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Ingenuity. The quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful. The cleverness or skillfulness of conception or design. All authors have their own perceptions and imaginations that reflect in their writings. Lewis Carroll demonstrates a logical, but seemingly nonsensical and childlike viewpoint on the world of the 1800s, via his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Throughout this somewhat confusing tale, Alice Liddell, a sensible girl of seven, travels through a fantastical dream-like world known to her as Wonderland. During her journey, Alice is met with a number of fairly vexing characters; namely: the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the White Rabbit, the Mock Turtle, the Duchess, the King and Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, and the Caterpillar. These odd persons seem to do nearly as much as they can to confuse Alice, but really only provide unhelpful, yet sensible trains of thought. After becoming rather overwhelmed from all of the advice being given to her, Alice is awakened from this bizarre dream by her older sister, telling her that it is time to go home. All through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, using parody, satire, and symbolism, Lewis Carroll pointedly compares Alice’s dream-world to his own existing world of the 1800s.

Parodied events in Wonderland, such as the trial of the Knave of Hearts, pave the road back to age in which Carroll lived; that is, the 1800s. In the trial of the Knave of Hearts, the Knave of Hearts is accused by the Queen of Hearts of stealing the Queen’s tarts. For the duration of this unjust and rather ridiculous trial, different actions of the court are exaggerated for comical effect. For example, when guards have the need to take control of a certain cheering guine...

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...all shrouded in seemingly nonsensical logic.

Lewis Carroll, by applying parodies, satirical events, and symbols, constantly parallels Wonderland with his own age of the 1800s for the duration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Young Alice Liddell’s journey through this wondrous dream-land yields a new sense of logic, morals of life, and new viewpoints on the 1800s, as well as the present time era. The somewhat absurd but logical statements that make up Carroll’s novel are guileless in nature, but are able to confuse the reader all the same. The peculiar characters in the story are sent to relay certain morals that Lewis Carroll believed needed to be shared with the generation younger than him, and would not have been included otherwise. Carroll’s unswervingly logical writings, however confusing, have many layers, and should be examined as such requires.