Analysis of Animal Characters in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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Why are animal characters so popular in children’s literature? Why do they tend to be either fierce or friendly? How do animal characters impact children’s literature? In Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, the animal characters are very weird. They were supposed to guide Alice through the traditional fairytale world she has created, but instead they were negative influences on this child. I believe the audience expected that animal characters are supposed to because they are the ones who should be a role model for kids to look up or when they read it. Do the animal characters in Lew Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland disobey the animal characters in traditional fairytales? The animals in Alice argue with her, confuse her, and tell her upsetting stories instead of guiding her through the fairytale world she has created. “Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience.” by Thomas C. Haliburton. It is related to my thesis because the animal characters in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland felt that they had authority to disobey the animal characters in other traditional fairytales. This is similar to Del Toro’s Pan Labyrinth because there are main animal characters like fairytales, faun, and paleman. They have the weird physical features. It was really gross to see them. This applied to Lewis Carroll’s book because he used the animals in a weird way. For example, The Cheshire-Cat’s body disappeared but the face was still there. Other example is a mouse walking by Alice. In real life, mouse rarely does that. When she looked at the rabbit, she never had seen any rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it. She began to wonder and decided to go after him. When Alice tried to lo... ... middle of paper ... ...ms with the children because the population is increasing rapidly. Lewis Carroll is sending an urgent message to all the audience to be prepared for their children to see a lot of adulthood problems. Citations: Ashbourne, M.S.,The Cheshire-Cat: Sign of Signs; The Cheshire-Cat: Signifying character as a character (2007) Burn, A. Potterliteracy: Cross-Media Narratives, Cultures and Grammars; Aragog the spider—cross-media narrative transformations (2006) Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth Tannen, D. In Lunsford et al. p. 830 Lunsford et al. 2009 Chapter 2 Lunsford et al. 2009 Chapter 3 Lunsford et al. 2009 Chapter 1 p. 24 Carroll 1865, p. 8 in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Carroll 1865, p. 11 in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Carroll 1865, p. 27 in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Carroll 1865, p. 28 in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

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