Lewis Carroll Satire

Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass take us through a journey Alice has while she is asleep. The Alice books are considered by some to be light and humorous while others believe that these books are heavy and sober. According to Martin Gardner, those who claim these books are heavy and sober have visions of “the monstrous mindlessness of the universe”. As people go through life, there are going to be ups and downs. There is no way to tell what will happen and how it will affect a person. It is through these experiences that one learns to go forward and continue through life. What Lewis Carroll is trying to get across is how a child views the world adults live in as they grow to live in it. Alice

Through some of the characters created by Alice’s imagination, though they are meant to have underlying meanings, they bring humor into the story due to what they are. For example, in chapter six, “Alice laughed so much” during the encounter between the Fish-Footman and the Frog-Footman “she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her” (Carroll 58). For the Fish-Footman and the Frog-Footman, they find it completely normal to be living their lives believing they are beings that exist naturally in the world. There should be no heavy and sober meanings in this context of the story. This was one of the ways Lewis tried to bring humor into his

Alice must follow the rules of the game in order to move forward, which restricts her free will and her ability to stray from the path. In chapter three, she sees an elephant among the flowers and would love to go join the elephant. It fascinated her. As much as she would have loved to go over there, she stops herself as she is running down the hill and decides that she will come back because she has to continue playing the game. Continuing into Alice’s journey, Alice also finds that her path forward is influenced by circumstances that cannot be controlled by her. For example, in chapter eight the White Knight appears to rescue her from the Red Knight. Without the help of the White Knight, Alice might not have made it to the seventh square. As Alice reaches the square where she will become queen, the White and Red queen both are there to greet her and intensely question her to make sure she will pass the test of being queen. Alice does not back down from the queens interrogation. When she rises to give thanks, she is able to end the game and wake up from the