alice's adventures in wonderland & through the looking glass book

So her identity with the animals has a lot to do with her size in relationship to adults. Alice feels a natural identity with them, but her relationship ultimately turns on her viewing them as adults. Although they may not seem so in behavior, most of them are, really, pets. (And the Gryphon is a mythical animal so he doesn't count as a 'true' animal.) Most of the Wonderland animals are the kind one finds in middle-class homes, pet shops, and in children's cartoons.

And in Wonderland, except for the Gryphon, none of the animals are of a hostile nature that might lead Alice to any harm. In an age such as our own, where philosophers earnestly debate the rights of animals, or whether machines can 'think,' we cannot escape the child's affinity for animals. The child as an innocent, sympathetic object has obvious satirical utility, but only to the point that the child must extend sympathy herself - and Alice fails to do this when she describes her cat Dinah to the Mouse, and later when she confesses to having eaten eggs to the frightened mother pigeon. Conversely, to grow and mature leads to inevitable corruption, to sexuality, emotionalism, and adult hypocrisy. By implication, there is the view that a child's perception of the world is the only sane one. In her encounters, we see the charmingly pathetic ingénue - a child whose only purpose is to escape the afflictions around her. Alice's innocence makes her a perfect vehicle of social criticism a la Candide. At most, the other creatures are antagonists, either a bit genial or cruel, depending on how they treat Alice at any given point in the story. Trapped in solitude, she finds herself lapsing into soliloquies that reflect a divided, confused, and desperate self.Īlice is the most responsible 'character' in the story in fact, she is the only real person and the only 'true' character. Alice becomes, to the reader, a mistreated, misunderstood, wandering waif. Every attempt to establish a familiar basis of identity creates only the sense of being lost - absolutely lost. She cannot get her recitations right, and she becomes even more confused when her arithmetic (a subject she believed to be unchanging and solid) fails her. Physically, she is lost psychologically, she also feels lost. She is further lost when she cannot establish her identity. Her curiosity has led her into a kind of Never-Never Land, over the edge of Reality and into a lonely, very alien world. Here are some general themes which the reader may find interesting and of some use in studying the work.Īlice's initial reaction after falling down the rabbit-hole is one of extreme loneliness. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland provides an inexhaustible mine of literary, philosophical, and scientific themes.

Alice's adventures in wonderland & through the looking glass book