Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is more than just a whimsical tale of a young girl’s journey through a fantastical world; it is a masterful exploration of the complexities and contradictions of language itself.
Throughout Alice’s encounters with the peculiar inhabitants of Wonderland, Carroll crafts a series of linguistic puzzles that challenge not only Alice but also the reader to question the very nature of words and their meanings.
These playful yet profound twists on language reveal how words can shape reality, influence thought, and even alter one’s sense of identity. In this analysis, we will delve into the power of words in Carroll’s classic, uncovering how he uses language to blur the lines between sense and nonsense, ultimately prompting readers to reconsider their own perceptions of meaning.
Table of Contents
Overview
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a masterpiece of children’s literature and a major contribution to ‘nonsense’ writing, which uses language according to the rules of play rather than the rules of poetry or prose.
Such writing disconnects words from their usual meanings and calls attention to language as an artificial system of communication.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the reader is entertained by the ridiculous creatures Alice meets and challenged by them to understand words in new and unusual ways.
The questioning of the meaning and impact of language in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has led to considerable appreciation of the book by thinkers in a variety of disciplines.
Philosophers, psychoanalysts, linguists, and logicians have all examined Carroll’s story for its insight into how words create their own meanings and, more importantly, how they create human identities.
The influence of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on other literary works is exemplified by James Joyce’s incorporation of features of it in Finnegans Wake. The famous children’s author, Maurice Sendak, also owes a debt to Carroll in both the text of Outside Over There (1981) and in the illustrations to several of his works, reminiscent of the famous John Tenniel illustrations for the 1866 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Setting
On a riverbank in the English countryside during a ‘golden afternoon’, Alice listens while her sister reads from a book with no conversations or pictures in it.
Just as she is becoming unbearably bored and sleepy, Alice notices a White Rabbit who runs by exclaiming that he shall be ‘too late!’ When the rabbit takes a watch out of his pocket, Alice’s curiosity overcomes her; she jumps up and follows him down a large rabbit hole.
There begins her fantastic adventure in a bizarre, imaginary land.
Themes And Characters
After what seems like an endless fall, Alice finally lands in a dark winding passage. Ahead of her, the White Rabbit scurries along, still fretting about the time.
The White Rabbit appears again and again in Alice’s adventures as a continual reminder of the major theme of the story: that curiosity may lead to fun and excitement, but also to danger, confusion, and even humiliation.
However, in spite of the risks, it is important for young people to question the ‘facts’ that sometimes obscure truth in order to understand the complexities of life.
Alice represents the intellectual curiosity of childhood. She sets an example by boldly embarking on an adventure to discover the ‘meaning’ of a White Rabbit who wears a waistcoat and carries a watch.
Although Alice sheds many tears over her plight early in her adventures, she does not retreat when confronted with insults and even threats from characters such as the Mock Turtle, the Mad Hatter, and the King and Queen of Hearts. The character of Alice also goes against the stereotype—popular in Carroll’s time—of the young girl who is interested only in domestic skills, not intellectual growth.
Alice follows, but loses sight of the White Rabbit in a long, low hall furnished with nothing but a three-legged glass table. On the table, Alice discovers a key that fits a little curtained door leading to ‘the loveliest little garden you ever saw’.
Alice’s attempts to reach the garden represent another aspect of the story’s theme: pure earthly perfection—which the garden seems to represent—is never what it seems. When Alice finally enters the garden in one of the story’s concluding episodes, she witnesses a variety of injustices imposed on one group of playing cards by another. She herself is met with threats from the King and Queen of Hearts.
However, Alice finally rises to her full height, overcoming her opponents, and awakens to find herself back on the riverbank.
Before Alice arouses from her curious dream, however, she experiences bewildering variations in her height and encounters fantastic creatures. The food and drink Alice consumes in Wonderland cause her either to grow or shrink alarmingly.
Thus, Alice experiences the sensation we all experience when we have left our familiar surroundings and friends: never quite ‘fitting in’ with the environment. On the other hand, the nonsensical characters Alice meets seem perfectly at home.
Alice encounters a caterpillar who challenges her to explain who she is; but, having changed so many times, Alice is not clear about her own identity. She meets a variety of other strange creatures: a Duchess who mistreats her own baby, a ‘Cheshire’ cat who fades out of sight leaving only his grin behind, and a Mad Hatter who presides at an endless tea party.
These and other bizarre characters force Alice to reconsider her complacent attitudes about what is normal behaviour.
It seems that what is normal in one place might not be normal in another. By means of puns, riddles, and poems, which sound fine, but have no apparent meaning, the cast of characters in Wonderland forces Alice to question her ordinary ways of seeing, believing, and speaking.
As a literary character, Alice breaks the stereotype of the demure, passive Victorian girl. Alice’s adventures suggest that intellectual curiosity and competence are characteristics not limited by sex. Alice is interested in discovering meanings in life; her kind of curiosity is valuable in the study of science and philosophy.
Many aspects of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland question the solemn and sometimes hypocritical attitudes towards children demonstrated in Victorian literature. The lullaby the Duchess sings to her baby, for example, parodies a song, popular in Carroll’s time, called ‘Speak Gently’.
The popular song urges parents to ‘Speak gently to the little child/Its love be sure to gain’, while the Duchess insists that a parent must ‘Speak roughly to your little boy/and beat him when he sneezes’. By giving directly opposite advice on the question of child rearing, the Duchess reveals the excessive sentimentality of the popular view and hints that the reality may be different from that portrayed in the song.
Throughout Alice’s adventures, Carroll calls on the reader to note that nonsense can be made to sound very much like sense. He alerts the reader to think critically about the sense behind everyday language. This critical way of looking at language is especially important when applied to the words of those in authority. The King and Queen of Hearts assert their authority over the rest of the cards simply because a higher value has been assigned to them than to the rest of the ‘pack’.
They use their power (represented by their words) foolishly and arbitrarily and Alice refuses to accept them at ‘face-card’ value, calling them to account. It is this emphasis on the need to examine the power of words and other conventional symbols that gives Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland its social relevance even today.
Literary Style
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland challenges the reader to question certain conventional ways of thinking, in this case to recognize that the meaning of words can be flexible.
Words can be played with in such a way that a listener or reader becomes confused, amused, or even angry over what may be, upon closer examination, nothing but nonsense.
Alice’s adventures also demonstrate the importance of words to our sense of identity and value. Because Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland calls attention to the slippery relationship between words and meanings, the reader is made aware that language (in textbooks, novels, films, and newspapers) must be challenged again and again if important concepts are to be separated from nonsense.
The humorous verses Carroll places in the mouths of his Wonderland characters provide a literary treat for his readers. From Alice’s rendition of ‘You are Old, Father William’, to the Mock Turtle’s tribute to ‘Beautiful Soup’, the teasing verses inAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland are tests of the imagination. In fact, the Victorian prose of the story takes the reader to a world far removed from modern everyday experience. Thus, the reader who stays with Alice from beginning to end comes away from the adventure verbally and intellectually enriched.
When Alice leaves the security of the riverbank to satisfy her curiosity about the White Rabbit, she sets out on a quest requiring her to overcome a series of obstacles before she can return home. This basic plot structure—departing, overcoming, returning—places Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the tradition of the quest tale, which includes such works as the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and The Faerie Queen.
The same structure provides the basis for classics of children’s literature like Gulliver’s Travels and The Wizard of Oz.
It may seem that Alice’s adventures are trivial compared to the trials of Odysseus and Ulysses or the perils of the Redcrosse Knight, but it is important to remember that, like these other heroes, Alice must defend herself against fantastic creatures three or four times her size. In Alice’s quest, however, the battles are largely verbal ones.
The oddness of the creatures Alice meets is emphasized by what they say and how they say it. Alice and the reader often seem to forget the visual appearance of her opponent as she becomes engaged in her linguistic struggles.
Alice’s adventures also fit into the dream tradition, used by—among other writers—James Joyce in Finnegans Wake and Frank Baum in The Wizard of Oz. The characters who inhabit dreams are permitted a different sort of freedom of action, thought, and speech than those restrained by realistic conventions. Dreams also generate a logic that is most often a distortion of reality. Yet these distortions somehow reveal the ‘nonsense’ at the core of much of what we take to be common sense.
The story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has also shown an extraordinary ability to inspire striking illustrations. From Carroll’s own illustrations in the original edition to Franz Haacken’s elongated stylizations in 1970, the story has elicited some of the most engaging and memorable illustrations. Perhaps the best known are those of Sir John Tenniel whose pen and ink drawings were reproduced in the 1866 edition and have come to be considered by many critics as definitive.
Related Works And Adaptation
Carroll followed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Through the Looking-Glass (1871), which continues Alice’s adventures.
She meets more fantastic characters, like Humpty Dumpty, who challenge her to examine her language. There is a quality of sentimentality in Through the Looking-Glass, however, that is absent from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This more human quality is particularly evident in the character of the White Knight.
The book contains the most famous of Carroll’s poems, ‘The Song of the Jabberwocky’, which is composed almost entirely of meaningless words, yet is delightfully inspiring and reminiscent of chivalric songs.
Key film/TV/ Animation Adaptations include:
- The Alice Comedies (1920s) – Live-action/animated shorts by Disney.
- Smashing Time (1967) – Features characters named after nonsense poems.
- Alice or the Last Escapade (1977) – A French film about a girl named Alice in a surreal adventure.
- Jabberwocky (1977) – Terry Gilliam’s medieval film featuring the Jabberwock.
- Dreamchild (1985) – Explores the relationship between a reporter and an elderly woman, possibly Alice Liddell.
- Resident Evil (2002) – Includes references to the Alice stories.
- Alice in Wonderland (2010) – Tim Burton’s adaptation with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. IMDB includes its 1951, 1999 1985, 1933, 1915, 1949, 1981, and 1983 versions of movies of TV series of the same title.
- Various animated adaptations, including Disney’s 1951 film, a Betty Boop cartoon, and a 1983 anime.
- Numerous television adaptations, such as Adventures in Wonderland (1991–1995) and the Syfy miniseries (2009).
- More recent series like Alice in Borderland (2020) and Alice’s Wonderland Bakery (2022).
The document emphasizes the cultural impact of Carroll’s works, showcasing their influence across genres, including horror, science fiction, and fantasy which include the 1972 film of its content.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Quotes
- “Curiouser and curiouser!”
— Alice’s wonder at her experiences. - “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
— Alice reflecting on her identity. - “If you don’t know where you want to go, then it doesn’t matter which path you take.”
— A nod to the importance of direction. - “We’re all mad here.”
— The Cheshire Cat on the nature of madness. - “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
— On change and self-discovery. - “It’s no use in waiting by the river.”
— A reminder about taking action. - “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Emphasizing the power of imagination. - “Off with their heads!”
— The Queen of Hearts’ declaration, highlighting arbitrary authority. - “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently?”
— A beautiful reflection on nature. - “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
— Alice’s quest for guidance in a confusing world.
These quotes beautifully capture the whimsical and thought-provoking essence of the story
About the author
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, son of Frances Jane Lutwidge and the Reverend Charles Dodgson, was born on January 27, 1832, at Daresbury, Cheshire. He attended Richmond Grammar School in Yorkshire, Rugby School, and Christ Church, Oxford University.
His first creative works were poems and drawings, contributed to the family magazine Useful and Instructive Poetry at the age of 13. At 18 he began contributing prose, verse, and drawings to The Rectory Umbrella. At Oxford, he established himself as a freelance humorist and published stories and poems in the Oxonian Advertiser and the Whitby Gazette. He took a first class in the Final Mathematical School and received his degree in 1854.
In 1855 he composed the first stanza of ‘Jabberwocky’ and began lecturing in mathematics at Christ Church. The following year, 1856, was an important one in Dodgson’s life: he used the pen name Lewis Carroll for the first time on parodies written for the comic paper, The Train; he took up photography, purchasing his first camera; and he met Alice Pleasance Liddell, the little girl whom he immortalized in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Carroll continued his interest in photography alongside his professional career.
He received a master’s degree in 1859 and published A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry and Rules for Court Circular: (A New Game of Cards for Two or More Players) the following year. He was ordained as a deacon in 1861. During this time Carroll began meeting famous literary figures, including Alfred Tennyson, whose family he photographed.
On July 4, 1862, Carroll made a boating excursion on the Isis River in Oxford with Robinson Duckworth and the three Liddell sisters, daughters of the dean of Christ Church. He had been visiting and entertaining them for six years. It was a ‘golden afternoon’ and the boat was drifting lazily down the river, when Alice Liddell and her sisters entreated Carroll to tell them a story.
He proceeded to tell the story of a young girl named Alice who experienced fantastic adventures after falling down a rabbit hole in the English countryside. At the end of the day, when Carroll took the three little girls home, Alice asked him to write the story down. Carroll could not refuse the child’s request.
Soon afterwards he began writing and revising Alice’s Adventures Underground, which he published in July 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He published its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, in December 1871 (although it is dated 1872).
Carroll spent the last 30 years of his life at Oxford, writing verse, mathematical works, and children’s books. When he died on January 14, 1898, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland had already been acclaimed as a classic of children’s literature.