Alice in Wonderland In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll tells an entertaining story about a young girl’s adventures in a strange “Wonderland.” This novel represents a typical girl’s struggle to break away from adult control and receive a desired freedom from their absurd society. Although the novel was written during the Victorian age and many of the events of the story are based on Victorian society, children today also feel the suffocation of adult control and a society without morals. Carroll uses symbolism and various scenes throughout the novel to show the reader the freedom that Alice strives to achieve as well as how she tries to break away from the domination and conformity. The first scene in which Alice’s struggle to break away from adult control and Victorian England’s society is in Chapter 1. After falling into the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself lost in a corridor with many locked doors. The doors being locked represents Alice being controlled by society. The reader can see Alice’s struggle to break away from this control when, finding a key, she searches right away for the door that it fits in. She finds that it fits a very small door and when she unlocks it, Alice first sees “the garden.” She believes it to be the “loveliest garden you ever saw” and “longed to get out of the dark hall, and wander about among those bright flowers and those cool fountains...” Alice’s strong desire to enter the garden is clearly evident. After trying everything she can think of to get into the garden, Alice finally realizes that she is not yet able to enter it and breaks down in tears. Not being able to get into the “lovely garden,” which represents a place Alice can be away from... ... middle of paper ... ...an society, it was not considered proper etiquette to raise your voice to anyone, whether you are an adult or not. Alice rebels against the rules of the Victorian culture by expressing herself in such a manner. Free in the garden, Alice defies the Queen when she tries to execute her. It is then that Alice realized she must act against society or it would control her. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a paradoxical novel that represents a typical child’s struggle to break away adult society’s beliefs and rules. It is shown in three vital scenes of the novel how Alice struggles to enter the lovely garden of “Wonderland,” which represents a freedom from society’s rules and regulations. Alice did understand until the closing of the novel that society cannot be changed and to get away from it, you have to change yourself and rebel against it.
Alice’s failure to understand the “native” culture, and her insistence on imposing her own norms and values ultimately culminates in a life-threatening situation.” (Binova “Underground Alice:” the politics of wonderland). Alice is the colonised in the situation with the Queen of Hearts. When she is introduced to the Queen her evil nature is revealed as she orders “Off with her head!” (Carroll 96). However, she is contrasted to Alice’s good nature while she shouts “Nonsense!” ( Carrol 96). The theme of chaos and confusion is brought forward as they play croquet all at once with noises all around and even in the court where everyone is expected to be civil. Although the Queen, as a character reinforces adulthood, subversion emerges again by Alice standing up for herself at this time. Nearing the end of her dream, she stands up against the Queen at court but it dream ends without a resolution. Maria Lassen-Seger says in ( “Subversion of Authority”: In “Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland”), “the relationship between the child and the adult is an impossible power relation in which the child is marginalised and considered powerless, thus, the adults suggest in their books what a child ought to be, what values and images it should accept.” The Queen at this point in the dream would have been the
In his analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Richard Kelly describes Wonderland as a nonsensical place where Alice is “treated rudely, bullied, asked questions with no answers, and denied answers to asked questions.” Kelly gives special attention to the “dream garden.” Kelly equates the dream garden with the Garden of Eden, “a longing for lost innocence.” Alice peers through a passage and sees the “beautiful garden with bright flowers and cool fountains.” Unfortunately, she is too large to fit through the door, so she can only ponder its significance. When Alice shrinks to the proper size and finally enters the garden, however, she finds that it is not what she thought it would be. According to Kelly, “it proves to be a parodic Garden of Life, for the roses are painted, the people are playing cards, and the death-cry “Off with her head!” echoes throughout the croquet grounds. Kelly later implies that Alice’s dream garden represents Carroll’s “romantic vision of an Edinic childhood” but which is “corrupted by adult sin and sexuality.” The “hope and joy” that fills Alice lasts for a short time and then is “trample[d] . . . with the hatred and fury of the beheading Que...
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 ”.
...ich are somewhat symbolic of religion as a whole and finding her own beliefs. For instance, the garden that Alice has trouble accessing represents Eden, the flawless world Adam and Eve lived in before they sinned. She has trouble reaching this garden being Alice isn’t yet ready to go to such a perfect place as she herself isn’t pure of heart and still struggles with understanding what she believes in. Throughout Alice’s journey, however, she begins to learn more regarding herself with each curious encounter in wonderland.
The garden is the vehicle in which the narrator reveals her reluctance to leave behind the imaginary world of childhood and see the realities of the adult world. The evidence supporting this interpretation is the imagery of hiding. The narrator uses the garden to hide from reality and the changes of growing up. When she no longer can hide from reality, she tries to hide from herself, which leaves her feeling disillusioned and unsure of who she is.
Thus, Alice in Wonderland is a good illustration of a Hero’s Journey. This story allows us to see how Alice overcomes the three main phases, and most of the stages identified by Campbell in her journey-transformation from an undisciplined child to a wise young adult. Throughout the story, Alice overcomes the nonsense of the young and the old before she truly understands what adulthood is all about. All through her adventures in Wonderland, she encounters numerous new situations and meets different archetypes that are necessary for her to be considered a Hero.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the secondary environment behaves as a parody of Alice’s primary world or the larger, universally known, typical outline for Victorian society. Alice’s concrete perspective of the world clashes against the madness in Wonderland. Alice continues to maintain purity in a corrupt society found in the disturbed natural order of Wonderland when she is challenged by different obstacles that make her question her integrity.
This threefold process phase will further exemplify Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and Invisible Cities the individual and collective rites of passage. Alice in Wonderland begins the first stage of the threefold process of separation. “Either the well was very deep, or ...
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.
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.
Although the novel is notorious for its satire and parodies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland main theme is the transition between childhood and adulthood. Moreover, Alice’s adventures illustrate the perplexing struggle between child and adult mentalities as she explores the curious world of development know as Wonderland. From the beginning in the hallway of doors, Alice stands at an awkward disposition. The hallway contains dozens of doors that are all locked. Alice’s pre-adolescent stage parallels with her position in the hallway. Alice’s position in the hallway represents that she is at a stage stuck between being a child and a young woman. She posses a small golden key to ...
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
The title character, Alice, is a young girl around pre-teen age. In the real world, the adult characters always look down on her because of her complete nonsense. She is considered the average everyday immature child, but when she is placed in the world of "Wonderland," the roles seem to switch. The adult characters within Wonderland are full of the nonsense and Alice is now the mature person. Thus creating the theme of growing up'. "...Alice, along with every other little girl is on an inevitable progress toward adulthood herself"(Heydt 62).
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.
...inal realization that she is growing up and that is normal, therefore, she accepts it. In brief, Alice in Wonderland is a book about growing up, and Alice definitely has grown up since the beginning of her journey and she has entered the adolescence phase when she rebels against everyone. Although she is not able to control herself when she gets angry, in other words she is behaving like a normal adolescent, she has gained a new “power” from this confusing experience: being a person with a voice to say something that matters.