Tag Archives: Alice

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Alice in Wonderland

Before reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I did some research on Lewis Carroll himself. I found that “Lewis Carroll” is a pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Carroll chose a pen name because he valued his privacy. He was  a man with many interests, including religion, mathematics, photography, science, and children literature. It is said that he lit up around children, having an immense love for children’s stories. Alice in Wonderland was Carroll’s biggest success, and Alice herself is based off a real child that Carroll loved; his dearest child friend, Alice Pleasance Liddell. There is much debate over his relationship with young Alice, as well as his mental state while writing Alice in Wonderland. After researching Carroll further, my sources state that the well known rumour that Carroll had written Alice in Wonderland while under the influence of hallucinogenics is false.

It isn’t farfetched to assume that Carroll may have been on shrooms or LSD while writing Alice in Wonderland. Alice jumps from situation to situation quite bizarrely, and it is sometimes hard to keep up with the conversations she is having with the Wonderland animals. While reading Alice in Wonderland, I found myself thinking that this was nonsense. Alice would answer questions in a way that made no sense, things would happen randomly, and everything seemed to be unorganized and scrambled. But, also while reading, I found myself liking Alice’s character. She is creative, witty, and almost relatable in a strange way. I believe Alice could represent the inner nonsensical child in each of us, but she is not my favorite character.

My favorite character is the Cheshire cat. At first I was confused what a Cheshire was, so I looked it up and found it is defined by Mariam Webster as: Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England, in the United Kingdom. The western edge of the county forms part of England’s border with Wales. This concept of coming from another country could play into the whole idea if imperialism in Alice in Wonderland. The Cheshire cat has a huge grin on his face, and often poses philosophical questions to Alice. Carroll must have had a love for cats, because cats mentioned by Alice in the first chapter, as she has one herself, whom she loves. Cats represent mischievous charters in not literature.

 

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Alice’s One-Way Thoughts

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice has a one-track mind. All her thoughts are known to readers and she says things rather bluntly and honestly as she usually always states her opinions to the other characters. The only times when she doesn’t necessarily say her true feelings are when she knows her life would be in jeopardy as a result. She also always does whatever she has to in order to reach her goals. She’s quick to comment on the other characters’ behaviors as well if she disapproves. One example that shows Alice’s honest comments on others is when Alice tells March Hare that “it wasn’t very civil of [him] to offer [the wine]” (96) when there isn’t any wine. She does always try to say things in a respectful manner and in that quote, she does so. However, although she’s quick to say the March Hare isn’t civil, she doesn’t seem to be accepting when others point out her faults. When the March Hare replies that it also wasn’t very civil of her to sit with them uninvited, she claims that the table doesn’t belong to the March Hare and the others and that it can seat more people than just them. In her reply, I feel that she has a one-track mind because she tries to justify all her actions without really taking the other characters’ words to heart. The March Hare said it was uncivil of her to sit with them because she wasn’t even invited but her retort of the ownership of the table was completely irrelevant to the claim the March Hare made. In this sense, I feel that she just tries to justify herself and she’s not so great a listener because she already has thoughts of her own as to how things should be and because she seems to think that what she perceives as right should be what others perceive as right, making her have a one-track mind.

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Alice in Wonderland: Behind the Scenes

Alice in Wonderland is a classic piece in children’s lirature. It has been translated in so many different languages and has so many different version that Morton N. Cohen says it’s only second to the bible. There are many different rumors as to how Alice in Wonderland was created (the most popular being that Lewis Carroll was on an ecstasy trip; which I have seen no evidence of thus far). You would think that Lewis Carroll must have spent half of his life creating the fantastical world of Alice, would it surprise you that Lewis Carroll actually made the story up in only half a day! Lewis Carroll, better known as Charles L. Dodgson to his friends, was doing a favor for a fellow colleague by taking his three daughters and a friend on a boat trip in 1862. This afternoon is often referred to as the “golden afternoon” because it was at this time that all of the little girls started to get bored and fidgety on the boat and it was at this moment that Dodgson decided to tell a tale to the girls to come them down. You see, even though Dodgson was the very image of a boring man (he was a mathematician and was very shy, no one would think he held an ounce of creativity), he already had the experience of story telling off the top of his head. Dodgson was the eldest son of ten children and the responsibility of caring for and entertaining the children was often left to him. And thus, the story of Alice began, on that very boat trip. Dodgson uses many names that are familiar to him and the three girls, for example, his favorite of the three was Alice Liddell, which is why he named the main character Alice; his friend on the boat was named Robinson Duckworth and acted as the inspiration for the duck in the book; and lastly, Cheshire was a town he was fond of which inspired the Cheshire Cat. Dodgson himself said that the book would have never been written if it were not for Alice Liddell who upon hearing the story was very fascinated and harassed Dodgson for weeks until he agreed to make a paper copy for her so she could read it whenever she wanted. It took a couple of years, but Dodgson finally wrote one single copy of the tale. The book was displayed in Alice Liddell’s father’s office who was the dean of the school at that time and had many visitors. All of the visitors would sit to read the Alice book as soon as the saw it and became fascinated with it, eventually urging Dodgson to write an official copy and get it published.