Preview

Lewis Carrol

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
598 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lewis Carrol
Lewis Carrol Alices adventures in wonderland Analysis
The text under analysis is entitled «Alices adventures in Wonderland». The author of this masterpiece is famous Lewis Carrol. His true name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, but he used his pen name Lewis Carroll. He was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel «Through the Looking-Glass», as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies in many parts of the world (including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand) dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.
The story tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
The story is full of nonsense and chaos and in this extract Carroll prepares us for Alice's first major confrontation with absolute chaos. And note that Alice's literal-minded reaction to the impossible is always considered absurd here in Wonderland; it is laughable, yet it is her only way of coping. As she falls through the rabbit-hole, for instance, she wonders what latitude or longitude she has arrived at. This is humorous and ridiculous because such measurements — if one stops to think about it — are meaningless words to a seven-year-old girl, and they are certainly

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and Wizard of Oz are great works of fantasy. Each novel incorporates aspects that can help the reader understand more about a child's way of thinking and his/her journey to adulthood. Also elements from Bettelheim, Freud and Jung can be applied in analyzing each work.…

    • 1541 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland deals with a theme of madness and reasoning. Throughout the book Alice, the main character, is trying to be logical, as she solves the problems she encounters in Wonderland. One of the most notable and obvious examples of this is her struggle with the question, “who in the world am I” (Carroll, 18). She breaks down the problem into simple true statements, such as “I think I remember feeling different”, before allowing these facts to lead to their eventual conclusion, “I must have been changed for Mabel” (Carroll, 19). It appears to follow all the steps of rational reasoning. This kind of reasoning is in contrast with the other characters who, as the Cheshire-Cat summarizes, “we’re all mad here” (Carroll, 58).…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lewis Carroll wrote a story about a young girl ‘Alice’ who fell through a rabbit whole into a fantasy world inhabited by strange, humanlike creatures. Alice encounters lots of different humanlike creatures throughout her journey through the world of nonsense, poetry and mind-boggling logic, like, the talking flowers, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Queen of Hearts, Jabberwocky and the White Queen. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland included shrinking, growing to the size of a giant, attending the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, playing Croquet and attending the Queen of Hearts court.…

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was first imagined in 1862 and is considered to be a literary classic. Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was a mathematician and Reverend of the Christ Church University. During a 5 mile boat ride with three young girls he made up the story to keep them entertained. One of the girls, named Alice, asked him to write the story down for her. He made her a book, complete with illustrations and from that Alice in Wonderland was born. Despite its simple beginnings and seemingly innocent meanings, four decades later the book began being challenged for multiple reasons, and joined the banned books list. When the first of these absurd interpretations surfaced, the world was a much different place with different “issues” of the day. It seems that with each interpretation the “issues” of the current time may have been reflected in the analysis' of this enchanting story.…

    • 675 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the beginning of the story Alice starts off being pressured into marring a man she doesn’t even love. Her sister tells her to go get married and live just happily ever after like her but her husband is cheating on her. I think Alice’s call was when she kept spotting the white rabbit in the bushes and began to follow him in the middle of getting purposed to. Also after she fell down the hole the rabbit was trying to explain to her who she is and how she’s supposed to be the champion for wonderland.…

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Alice in Wonderland, the most famous work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, is the enduring tale of one girl's journey into a world of whimsy and imagination. The story was written for the enjoyment of all children, as Carroll had a strong love and attachment to them, especially little girls. It was however, written more specifically for a dear, close child-friend of his by the name of Alice Liddell, who was the inspiration for the title character. Alice in Wonderland has been, throughout the years since it's publication in 1865, endlessly deconstructed, analyzed, and studied for underlying meaning in the text (as in Martin Gardner‘s The Annotated Alice). One of the most noticeable and famous facets of the story is the many changes in size that Alice goes through. Alice changes size eleven times to fit her changing predicament in the tale. This can be easily seen in the animated Disney interpretation of the story that came out years ago. Throughout the book, Alice is given the opportunity to change size numerous times, this aiding…

    • 3911 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story of a young girl’s journey down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world where there seems to be no logic. Throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice experiences a variety of bizarre physical changes, causing her to realize she is not only trying to figure out Wonderland but also trying to determine her own identity. After Alice arrives in Wonderland the narrator states, “For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people” (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 12). This quotation is the first instance that shows Alice is unsure of her identity. The changes in size that take place when she eats or drinks are the physical signs of her loss of identity. The question of why Alice is unsure of her identity relates to Alice’s developing stage from childhood to adulthood. Carroll explains Alice's confusion about her own identity and her position between childhood and adulthood by contrasting her logical with the inhabitants of Wonderland.…

    • 1031 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Many themes are explored when reading Lewis Carrol’s, Alice in Wonderland. Themes of childhood innocence, child abuse, dream, and others. Reading the story, it was quite clear to see one particular theme portrayed through out the book: child to adult progression. Alice in Wonderland is full of experiences that lead Alice to becoming more of herself and that help her grow up. It’s a story of trial, confusion, understanding, and success. And more confusion. Though others might argue that the story was distinctly made for children just to get joy out of funny words, and odd circumstances, the tale has obvious dynamics that confirm the fact of it being a coming of age story.…

    • 1686 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    It may be perhaps Carroll's style of writing that entertains the reader, rather than teaching them a lesson as was customary in his time. Carroll mainly wrote for the entertainment of children, but it is believed that his life is intertwined in his stories. Carroll's stories of Alice, are usually described as being directly connected to his 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 love for childhood. 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. In Alice in Wonderland, Carroll uses not only his love for children and logic but his playfulness to create a story…

    • 1431 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 marks the beginning of what is often called the Golden Age of children's literature, a period when, for the first time, children's works were written for purposes other than moral uplift. Author Lewis Carroll invented a dreamworld where Alice, a remarkably self-possessed child, encounters a series of adult eccentrics (among them, the Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle), who utter parodies of well known, platitudinous poems of the period and otherwise indulge in bizarre illogic and imperious but ineffectual command. For many years the most widely read English-language work for children, the book has had many famous illustrators, including Sir John Tenniel, who illustrated the original edition, Arthur Rackham in 1907, and Mervyn Peake in 1954. The book's almost-as-famous sequel is Through The Looking Glass (1872).…

    • 252 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice starts beginning to see that the irrational mad creature in wonderland can actually have much to offer her on her quest of development and greater…

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    introduction on the emphasis on Alice’s size, is when she is falling down the rabbit hole and she…

    • 1594 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Alice faces many obstacles throughout her time in Wonderland. Most of them are because of the transition from childhood to becoming a young adult. Alice clearly represents the struggle children have when entering the world of adults. Also, Alice is trying to survive and understand who she is now because she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Like the Cheshire cat said: “Everyone in wonderland is mad, including you”. He meant that all adults are mad for children and Alice doesn’t believes that and she feels confused and out of place.…

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice, in her monotonous afternoon, found something different: a talking white rabbit and in her curiosity, followed it. The rabbit and the garden symbolize desires or dreams that she would be chasing throughout the story. Her falling into the rabbit hole and into Wonderland is parallel to the first step of initiation. Separation is needed in order to isolate any other factors that would suggest that the hero’s efforts is not his. It also tests the hero’s qualities and is a catalyst for uprising conflicts. Exposing Alice to a whole new different world challenges her character. More so if it is the total opposite of what she believes is…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The composers of Alice in Wonderland the novel and the film, and the Life of Pi the novel, have created a world that is both weird and wonderful. They have done this through their selected forms, use of language and film techniques to highlight the bizarre and transform it into a world that seems real. Lewis Carrol uses the form of a fairy tale to describe Alice’s adventure down the rabbit hole, Tim Burton focuses on visual techniques to emphasise the extraordinary or supernatural nature of the Alice in Wonderland story. Yann Martel presents a novel in the form of a memoir to recount the adventurous, Life of Pi. All three creators highlight the theme of weird in three ways. First, by its form, for example a fairy tale or memoir. Second, highlighting the bizarre through language and visual techniques. Third, by making the bizarre seem real or natural.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics