INGLESE

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a work of literary nonsense written by English author Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, considered a classic example of the genre and of
English literature in general. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a
fantastic realm populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures.

Alice’s adventures in Wonderworld takes place in Alice’s dream, so that the characters and phenomena of
the real world mix with elements of Alice’s unconscious state. The dream motif explains the abdance of
nonsensial and disparate events in the story. As in a dream, the narrative follows the dreamer as she
encounters various apisodes in which she attempts to interpret her experiences in relationship to herself
and her world. The characters and scenes that she encounters exist as a combination of her memories and
impressions of the waking and the random, illogical inventions of her dreaming mind. Though Alice’s
experiences end themselves to meaningful obsarvations, they resist a singular and coherent interpretation.

The themes presents in this story are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary
work.

• The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence.

Throughout the course of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderworld, Alice goes through a variety of absurd
physical changes. The discomfort she feels al never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes
that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustation, and
sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a confortable physical size. In Chapter I,
she becomes upset when she keeps finding herself too big or too small to enter the garden. In Chapter V,
she loses control over specific body parts when her neck grows to an absurd length. These constant
fluctuations represent tha way a child may feel as her body grows and changes during the puberty.

• Life as a Meaningless Puzzle.

In the story, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no clear solutions, which imitates the
way that life frustates expectation. Alice expects that the situations she encounters will make a certain kind
of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability to figure out Wonderworld. Alice solve the Mad Hatter’s
riddle, and understand the Queen’s ridiculous croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance the riddles
and challenges presented to Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in
Alice’s adventures in Wonderworld he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic. Alice learns
that she can’t expect to find logic or meaning in the situation that she encounters, even when they appear
to be problems, riddles, or games that would normally have solutions that Alice would be able to figure out.

STORY

Alice is very bored and sleepy while sitting with her older sister outside, until she sees a White Rabbit
looking at his watch and talking to himself. She follows the Rabbit down a very deep rabbit hole and ends
up far beneath the ground in a hall with a tiny locked door that leads to a beautiful garden.

She eats and drinks things that make her change in size, but she is still unable to get through the door into
the garden. When she becomes huge, she cries in frustration and when she shrinks, she is small enough to
swim around in a pool made of her own tears. In the pool, she encounters many creatures, including a
Mouse. The creatures and Alice manage to get out of the pool and dry off, but Alice is soon left alone.

Alice finds the Rabbit’s house and grows huge after drinking a strange liquid. She terrifies the rabbit and his
neighbors and grows very small again after fanning herself. Alice then comes across a Caterpillar smoking a
hookah. He irritates Alice and asks her to recite poetry, which she can’t do properly. The Caterpillar informs
Alice that eating one side of the mushroom he is sitting on will make her larger but eating the other side
will make her smaller. Alice is still trying to become the right size to get into the garden.

She comes to a house in the woods, where a Duchess, her ugly baby, her hostile Cook, and her Cheshire Cat
reside. The kitchen is full of pepper and dishes which were hurled in anger. Alice tries to save the baby from
this environment, but the baby soon turns into a pig, so she is forced to let it go. The Cheshire Cat appears,
grins at Alice, and recommends that she visit the Mad Hatter or the March Hare. The Cheshire Cat vanishes
and reappears suddenly. Finally, he disappears gradually so only his grin remains.

Alice goes to the March Hare’s house, where she finds a tea-party going on. Alice sits down at the table
with the Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse. She finds them rude and quickly becomes annoyed with
them, so she leaves. She decides to go through a door in a tree and again finds herself in the room with the
tiny door leading to the garden.

In the garden she comes across three gardeners painting white roses red. They are afraid of being executed
by the Queen of Hearts. Suddenly the Queen and her entourage of playing cards appear. The Queen invites
Alice to play croquet, and Alice joins a very strange game. She soon learns that the Duchess is to be
executed. The Cheshire Cat’s head appears above the ground and causes quite a stir.

The Duchess is brought from prison to settle matters and begins talking with Alice about the moral of
everything. The Queen then decides Alice should go meet the Mock Turtle; she is escorted by the Gryphon.
Alice learns the Mock Turtle’s history and sees a dance called the Lobster Quadrille. Alice again tries to
recite poetry with little success.

The Gryphon whisks Alice back to court when they hear that the trial is beginning. The Knave of Hearts is on
trial for stealing the Queen’s tarts. Alice is excited to be in court and to hear the testimony of the Hatter
and the Cook. Alice herself is called to testify after she has inexplicably grown larger again. Alice is
impertinent and the King orders her to leave the court, but she refuses. She is outraged by the unfairness of
the court's proceedings and provokes the Queen to order her execution. Alice tells the court that they’re
nothing but a pack of cards, and they rise up and attack her.

At this point, Alice realizes that she has been asleep for a long time in her sister’s lap. She tells her sister
about the events of her marvelous dream and then goes in to tea. Her sister is captivated by the dream and
imagines Alice as a grown woman who will still have a child-like sense of wonder.