In Lewis Carroll's novel Alice in Wonderland, Alice is curious, well-mannered, and confused while she tries to find her way out of
Wonderland. Alice meets many unique and weird creatures which eventually help her escape wonderland. Alice shows that she is curious through her actions. At the beginning of the book Alice gets distracted from her "boring" work, and chases a white rabbit down a hole. This excerpt describes Alices curiosity, "Alice started to her feet, for it flashed in her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket". When Alice is at the bottom of the hole she find a bottle labeled "Drink Me", she wants to see what it tastes like, this excerpt describes the event "...this bottle was not marked `poison', so Alice ventured to taste it, finding it very nice". Another instant that shows her curiosity when she looks for the white rabbits fan and gloves, she finds a bottle, this time there was no table, "There was no label this time with the words `Drink Me' ... `I know something interesting is going to happen' ... ` I'll just see what it does',". Alice is like a little girl that is still exploring the world around her, but she finds that she is more mature than the creatures in Wonderland.
Alice is very well mannered in Victorian ways to the creatures of
Wonderland. Alice shows her good manners when she enters the white rabbits house and the rabbit tells Alice to go fetch his gloves and fan, "I'd better take his fan and gloves- that is if I can find them", since Alice is a guest, uninvited, she follows the owners orders. When Alice runs into caterpillar she calls him
"Sir", here is an excerpt from the book , " I can't explain myself myself, I'm afraid, Sir", this shows that she respects the creatures of Wonderland. When Alice enters the Duchesses house and the Duchess throws the baby to Alice, Alice starts to take care of it, " `Here! You may nurse it a bit, if you like!' Alice caught the baby with some difficulty ...", this shows her maternal side.
Wonderland is an illogical land, nothing seems to make sense to
Alice. She starts to become very frustrated and confused. When
Alice meets the caterpillar the following conversation takes place, " `Who are you!' the caterpillar asked ... `I - I hardly know, Sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning' ... ", Alice is so confused she does not even know who she is.
Marriage has changed more over the last 30 years than the previous 3,500 years. As
Every person thinks about a certain question at least once in the lifetime. The question that is most thought about is, ¨Who am I?¨ Many people would respond with their name, their parents, or where they live. Others use their reputation, their occupation, and their looks. At last, a few others identify themselves by their significant actions they have done. In some stories, characters try to find out who they really are. In the short stories ¨Fish Cheeks¨ by Amy Tan, ¨Two Kinds¨ by Amy Tan, and ¨Papa´s Parrot¨ by Cynthia Rylant,the characters learn about their identities through significant moments.
Cohabitation, over the last two decades has gone from being a relatively uncommon social phenomenon to a commonplace one and has achieved this prominence quite quickly. A few sets of numbers convey both the change and its rapidity. The percentage of marriages preceded by cohabitation rose from about 10% for those marrying between 1965 and 1974 to over 50% for those marrying between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999, Bumpass & Sweet 1989); the percentage is even higher for remarriages. Secondly, the percentage of women in their late 30s who report having cohabited at least once rose from 30% in 1987 to 48% in 1995. Given a mere eight year tome window, this is a striking increase. Finally, the proportion of all first unions (including both marriages and cohabitation) that begin as cohabitations rose from 46% for unions formed between 1980 and 1984 to almost 60% for those formed between 1990 and 1994 (Bumpass and Lu 1999).
Alice Walker's Literature “Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence” -Alice Walker (Lewis n.pag) Walker is considered to be an African American novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and activist. Most of her literature is mostly from her personal experiences and is moral to a number of African Americans all over the world. Walker defines herself as a “womanist” which means “the prophetic voice concerned about the well-being of the entire African American community, male and female, adults and children.
Alice Walker's short fictional story, "Nineteen Fifty-five", revolves around the encounters among Gracie Mae Still, the narrator, and Traynor, the "Emperor of Rock and Roll." Traynor as a young prospective singer purchases a song from Mrs. Still, which becomes his "first hit record" and makes him rich and famous. Yet, he does not "even understand" the song and spends his entire life trying to figure out "what the song means." The song he sings seems as fictional as certain events in this story, but as historical as Traynor's based character, Elvis Presley.
Thesis Statement: Alice Walker, a twentieth and twenty- first century novelist is known for her politically and emotionally charged works, which exposes the black culture through various narrative techniques.
Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize winning, internationally acclaimed author and poet who wrote the much studied short story “Every Day Use,” which was first published in 1973. Ms. Walker is originally from Putnam County, Georgia and was born on February 9, 1944, well before the civil rights movement in the US had begun and at a time when African Americans, particularly in the south endured hardships which would seem almost unimaginable to most young people today. Her family was one of limited means and by most accounts, lived a meager lifestyle as sharecroppers, struggling to get by and provide basic sustenance on a daily basis. By the early 1960s, she had become deeply interested in activism and civil rights not only for African Americans here in the US, but for anyone she viewed as oppressed no matter whom or where they are. Not coincidentally, her life experiences and philosophies are also recognizable in the characters of some of her works. “Every Day Use” (Walker) is one such story which contains many parallels to the author’s real life experiences and exposes the reader, at least in part, to Alice Walker’s background as well as some of her thoughts and views on a range of topics.
Do authors such as Alice Walker connect to their real life experiences into his/her writings? Well, Alice Walker is one of those authors. Alice Walker is a black African-American author and activist. She writes novels, short-stories, poems, and essays. In fact, one of her most famous novel was “The Color Purple”. Walker was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. This essay will reveal how an author named Alice Walker connects her real life experiences into her writings.
In “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker tells the story of a mother and her two daughters’ conflicting relationship based on identity and ancestry. Mama, the narrator of the story, describes herself as a strong, big-bonded woman, sometimes burdened by her daughters Dee and Maggie. Mama’s inner monologue demonstrates how slow she turned away from the external values of her older daughter in approval of internal values of her younger daughter. The story focuses on the bonds among the three women and their long-lasting inheritance, symbolized in the quilts each contrived together. This connection among generations remains strong until Mama’s older daughter Dee came to visit, after being away for some time. Dee’s arrival and lack of understanding of her history creates conflict, after she interrupts the true meaning of the family inheritance for her own desires. When Maggie suggests the quilt be given to her older sister, Mama began to see Maggie in a different light. Walker uses Maggie and Dee to suggest heritage holds deep significance.
“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise” (Carroll 105). This and advice of this kind are often dispensed by the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Alice, and like the transition from child to adult, the advice is generally rarely fully understood if not confusingly difficult to wrap logic around. Many illustrators have undertaken the task of conveying a clear picture of the struggle that Alice goes through in order to triumph over childhood and nonsense into the realm of adults and logic. Angel Dominguez shows Alice’s struggle to grow up and out of childhood, a major theme of the text, in such a way that the audience can almost feel her anxiety. The use of the body language of Alice, the Duchess and the supporting animals, in addition to compositional elements such as proximity and framing, is a principal mechanism of Dominguez in evoking Alice’s anxiety and emphasizing the uncomfortable passage into maturity on one’s own while dealing with the pressures and advances of an adult world.
Most people know the name Lewis Carroll, and even more know about the taleof a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole straight into the adventure of a lifetime. But not many people know the name Charles Dodgson, the man behind the pseudonym and the one who constructed this wonderland from a summer time boat ride in 1862. Originally written for three friends, the Liddell sisters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has inspired philosophers, artists, writers, theologians, and not to mention the general public. The culture in which this piece of art was written has shaped Alice’s dream-like journey from the first false step into an almost never ending fall to the last storm of cards. Dodgson’s enchanting work illustrates mankind’s childlike spirit that 1880s English society tried so hard to ignore.
Spiritually, Snow White will complete her task through her journey with Christ. Her journey with Christ is the most prominent subconscious task that she will complete. When she enters the Dwarfs’ house, she sees “seven little beds…covered with spotless sheets” (Hallett, Martin, and Barbara Karasek 149). The repetition of the number seven is related to the seven deadly sins that she, as an innocent girl, has not had to deal with, and that’s why the sheets are spotless. As she matures and grows into a spiritual woman, she will have to overcome the temptation associated with the seven deadly sins. The first sins, Gluttony and Sloth, are shown when Snow White eats the dwarfs’ food and sleeps in their beds. The dwarfs are imaginative figures in her mind that represent the Holy Spirit within people of Christian faith. The dwarfs lead her away from the first sins that she comes into contact with because they tell her that she has to do the housework and cook if she wants to stay with them. This helps her move into maturity both spiritually and figuratively because if she continues to do the housework she won’t submit into laziness, and if she does the chores then it can help her to prepare for her duties as a wife or mother in the second stage of her life.
Lewis Carroll's use of puns and riddles in Alice in Wonderland help set the theme and tone. He uses word play in the book to show a world of warped reality and massive confusion. He uses such play on words to reveal the underlying theme of growing up', but with such an unusual setting and ridiculous characters, there is need for some deep analyzing to show this theme. The book contains many examples of assonance and alliteration to add humor. Carroll also adds strange diction and extraordinary syntax to support the theme.
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 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.