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Critical analysis of alice's adventures in wonderland
Critical analysis of alice's adventures in wonderland
Essay on alice in wonderland
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Why was Alice in Wonderland banned? Alice in Wonderland, a tale many children and adults read at some point or another , has been banned since 1931 in China, because the Governor of Hunan Province thought that “Animals should not use human language, and it was disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.” Alice in Wonderland has been banned as early as the 1900s in other countries. It was temporarily banned from classroom use at Woodsville High School in Haverhill, New Hampshire, because the novel was said to have expletives, references to masturbation and sexual fantasies, and “derogatory characterizations of teachers and religious ceremonies.”There are some rumors that claim that Dodgson was a pedophile and that he was sexually attracted to the girls he told his tale to. There is a another rumor that got spread around that he photographed them nude which is the base of this argument. …show more content…
It was a very common and widespread practice because people saw the natural beauty in people, including the innocence of children. He took pictures of the girls with the permission of their mothers and he instructed that after his death the pictures either be destroyed or returned to the girls. Whether this is true, there is no specific clarification that the photos were destroyed. Above all, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are brilliant works of fiction aimed at entertaining children and adults of all ages. Literature for children had, up to that very point, been self-righteous and narrow-minded in its scope; but these absurd tales, full of puns and comedy, had no meaning, no moral agenda and was written only to entertain children of any
While researching the book you discover that in South Carolina, the Berkley County school district, was one of the first to pull the book from schools and libraries. This occurred after a mom protested the book when her 8th grade daughter had to read little experts from the book to her classmates. The student's mother did not want her to be reading a book with so much profanity and references to sex. One of the most controversial lines that comes from the book is when Alice writes in her journal “Another day, another blow-job”. She does these blow jobs in exchange for drugs.
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 ”.
Would you really ban a book for mentioning a word that is out of the norm for children? I sure wouldn’t. When the word “scrotum” was mentioned in Susan Patron children’s book, “The Higher Power of Lucky”, many librarians pledged to ban the book from elementary schools. Was it the right thing to do? In some cases it is but it all depends on how the book is being perceived. Although the book talks about Lucky growing up, it shouldn’t be a problem talking about this kind of language and body parts to children that are old enough to understand growing up. Librarians shouldn’t be losing focus on the big picture of the book instead of starting a controversy over something that has been done before in a children’s book.
“Alice in Wonderland” written by famous author, Lewis Carroll, is a fantasy novel printed with many respects and portrays a vivid reflection of society through satire. For instance, Carroll criticizes that Wonderland is a monarchy and not a democracy; it is separated between different social classes, and clearly speaks volumes of the scheme during Queen Victoria’s rein. During the Victorian Era, British imperial power took a large-scale expansion through many colonial parts of Africa, India, Asia, and other parts of the middle-east. Thus, increasing use of the English language outside of Europe and increasing trade with distant regions. This produced a strong spirit of animosity during Queen Victoria’s rein. However, later in the Age, writer’s like Lewis Carroll rebelled against blasphemy and stereotypical codes of conduct. “Alice in Wonderland” is one work of fiction that Lewis Carroll gives a prime example of his satirical entourage.
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.
Alice Liddell would recall this event as “that golden afternoon,” for during the trip Carroll began the outlines of the story that would become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.5 Alice encouraged Carroll to write the story down, which he eventually did, giving Alice a handcrafted copy. Carroll also showed the story to friends and was encouraged to seek publication, which he finally accomplished with the now familiar illustrations by Sir John Tiennel (Figs. 2, 3, and 21). The book was published in 1865, three years after its initiation during an afternoon of boating .
The underlying message of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a rejection of adult authority. The character of Alice is not at all like what you would find in a typical children's book. "The character of Alice herself is a bit puzzling, even to the modern child, because it does not fit a stereotype. How much more unusual she must have seemed to Victorian children, used to girl angels fated for death (in Dickens, Stowe, and others), or to impossibly virtuous little ladies, or to naughty girls who eventually reform in response to heavy adult pressure... But Alice is neither naughty nor overly nice. Her curiosity leads her into her initial adventure and most of the latter ones in the book... (Leach 119)."
Baum in creating an American version of a fairy tale combined traditional elements such as witches, wizards, monsters, and talking animals with familiar things for children and adults of his time such as cornfields and scarecrows. He followed in Lewis Carroll’s footsteps, whose book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the most popular children’s book at the time, in creating a fun children’s book full of pictures and a lack of obvious morals dragging it down.
Finding the Child in Us All Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has entertained not only children but adults for over one hundred years. The tale has become a treasure of philosophers, literary critics, psychoanalysts, and linguists. It also has attracted Carroll’s fellow mathematicians and logicians. There appears to be something in Alice for everyone, and there are almost as many explanations of the work as there are commentators. It may be perhaps Carroll’s fantastical style of writing that entertains the reader, rather than teaching them a lesson as was customary in his time. Heavy literary symbolism is difficult to trace through his works because of the fact he wrote mainly for entertainment. In fact, Carroll’s stories, including Alice, are usually described as being direct parallels to Carroll’s life. This is obvious due to the various references Carroll makes of the favorite things in his life such as his obsession with little girls and not to mention his nostalgia for childhood1. The most prominent interpretation of Alice is the theme of fantasy versus reality. The story continuously challenges the reader’s sense of the “ground rules” or what can be assumed. However, with a more in-depth search, the adult reader can find Carroll may have indeed implanted a theme relative to the confusion Alice goes through as well as the reader. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carroll uses not only his love for children and logic but his linguistic playfulness to create a story in order to show the psyche of a child. Moreover, Carroll makes fun of the way Victorian children were raised. In the nineteenth century people were expected to behave according to a set of rules and morals. Carroll’s nonsensical behavior of his characters can be seen as making fun of the way children were forced to behave and their rationale. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland overall is contradicting the standard way children’s literature was written. As one can see, the story of Alice takes its reader through many different levels. With the lovable creation of a fantastical world, Carroll invites his readers on a nonsensical yet familiar journey of the questioning of identity by child yearning to take the step into adulthood prematurely, enabling him to entertain while simultaneously satirizing the Victorian Era. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begins with Alice si...
Because of the variety of characters exposed in both Brave New World and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, many similarities can be linked between the two novels’ characters. Although similar characteristics can be discovered, the contrasting personalities and ideas of each individual character create abundant differences between them as well. The insanity of Wonderland’s characters derives from repeated recognition of Lewis Carroll’s love for children. His strong dislike of boys made his strong preference for girls seem even more unusual than it already was, and there were many theories that implied that Carroll felt sexual around young girls. However, there w...
the actual story of Alice in Wonderland is quite simple. A young girl is being read to by her older sister and sees a white rabbit wearing an overcoat and a pocket watch. she decides to follow it into Wonderland where she experiences several amazing things such as changes in her height to a talking cat that likes to disappear. how this man came up with this idea is unknown it is known however that he always tried to teach the children a lesson with his stories. and thats exactly what he did here.
In such a cherished children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written in 1865, has caused great commotion in political and social satire. It slowly but surely grew into one of the most adored publications in the Victorian era, expanding into today’s modern age. Lewis Carroll was the pen name utilized by Charles L. Dodgson and has forth created a sequel named Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There composed first in 1871. In short, the text of the story presented with a feminist approach, a corrupt judicial system of Victorian England, the caucus race, and the absence of a childhood, the evolution of species, and Marxism.
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).
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?
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.