Alice in Wonderland Analysis

Angelica Rozenfeld

Professor Zoë Slutzky 

English 305

25 May 2017

Tracking Alice in and out of Wonderland: An analysis of the relationship between the different worlds depicted by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” is a striking paradigm of a world-shifting fantasy in children’s literature. “Fantasy is vital for the human mind. It begins as the psychological process by which a child learned to fill the gaps between knowledge, reality, and experience.” (Webb) “Alice in Wonderland” allows for our analysis to do just that. It provides us with two different worlds, but allows us to shift through them as we please through the nonsensical, curious shoes of the main character: Alice. We get a glimpse of her ordinary world, a rash transition, and then an ocean of absurdities displayed through the story-world. Following the character allows us to analyze the obvious differences between the two worlds, and also the less-obvious aspects of each world mixed within the ventures of the other. While they are in fact dichotomous, they are certainly not independent of each other.

        Before spiraling into the chaos that is Alice’s wonderland, we get a glimpse of what her “real” world entails. The novel incepts with Alice’s judgment of a book that her sister is reading. She is frazzled with the fact that it is bereft of any pictures. From just the first paragraph of the book, we are already introduced to the elements of the real world that wheel Alice into the state of pandemonium that she seems staggeringly in need of: boredom, drowsiness, and curiosity.

        From the very first sentence, we are blatantly informed of how bored the main character is. Carroll writes, “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do.” (Carroll, 1) Besides herself, her sister is the only other character in this real world that we are introduced to, and the fact that Alice was sitting by the bank on a very hot day was just about the only imagery of her real world that the author gives us. He makes it clear to us, however, how lazy and tired she is in the second paragraph of the novel: “She was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies.” (1) It is vivid to us that Alice, though seemingly unhappy about her current lack of adventure, is too lazy to really do anything about it. This raises an interesting thought of how her trip towards unreality occurs with little to no personal effort, as if almost inevitably. Thus, what is It that assists her lethargy in steering such a sudden shift in reality in the first place?

        The transition between Alice’s two worlds was marked by the presence of a “White Rabbit.” While it was initially unclear to us where this rabbit came from and what his purpose in the storyline was, it helped introduce us to the aspect of Alice’s personality that allowed for the entire plot to exist in the first place: her curiosity. “Children are born with the full spectrum of human emotions, wild, exciting, passionate, vigorous, totally irrational and raring to go. But they are also inexperienced and longing to explore their feelings.” (Webb) While Webb was talking about the children who are reading the books, I found it very interesting that the description matches Alice as a character more than anything. Alice surely attains a full spectrum of human emotions. Her curiosity is the infinite fuel to her limitless engine of childhood. She follows the rabbit to explore her feelings of curiosity, which is accented through the authors use of language, through her choice of actions, and through her pure acceptance of whatever is happening.

        The transition from reality to mayhem is evidently delineated through the obvious change in the authors language. After including just two paragraphs of ordinary dialect to describe the conventional current events, the author begins to play around with capitalization to accent Alice’s train of thought. He writes, “There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’” (1) This random capitalization reaches out to the reader in hopes of grabbing his or her attention and foreshadowing a turn of events. Furthermore, the entire paragraph is bereft of any punctuation besides commas, thus portraying a complete run-on sentence. This play on grammar further symbolizes Alice’s train of thought, and tries to paint to us the depiction of her curiosity, which led to her immediate action of following the rabbit down a large rabbit-hole. This is done so without any acknowledgement of what is actually happening. Carroll delineates her lack of responsiveness shortly after she hops into the hole: “In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.” (1)  This portrays both the strength that a child’s curiosity bears, and its capability of transporting the child to a completely alternate universe. The real world was encompassed merely by two characters, a lack of any significant scenery, and the absence of any unordinary events. Once Alice’s curiosity disintegrated her metaphorical tinted glasses, though, she was able to submerge into the colorful chaos that is Carroll’s story world: a world that is filled with characters, an abundance of imagery, and anything but ordinary.

        The story world is filled with characters that differ strikingly from the only character present in the real world, Alice’s sister, who was utterly normal. We are introduced to talking animals, cards, and twisted companions. The Queen of Hearts, for example, the ruler of Wonderland, represents Alice’s conflicts throughout her journey. She is a character filled with much more personality than any of which we’ve witnessed at the inception of the novel. She is a literal playing card, who holds a plethora of dominance, and introduces Alice to fear in its truest form.

Another interesting character we meet in Wonderland is the Cheshire Cat. This cat is closest in disposition to poise and composure. He carries an ocean of insight, however, and is helpful to Alice in allowing her to come to realizations that she wouldn’t come to on her own. The cat explains to Alice that the cumulative madness of Wonderland is not to be reckoned with, and thus any normal behavior she came in with will soon be lost amid the chaos of her surrounding atmosphere. The aspect of her normal behavior that sets her apart from the other Wonderland creatures, is once more her all-consuming curiosity, and hopes of absorbing everything she sees.