Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Daydreams are not always meaningless, they permit one a chance to create a place where one can rehearse the future and imagine new adventures without risk. Allowing the mind to roam without restrictions can show us who were really are and how we perceive the world around us. Lewis Carroll uses these fantastical thoughts as a foundation for that of Wonderland, a bizarre and seemingly absurd world in which, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and the sequel, Through the Looking Glass occur. These novels both depict the journey and adventure of a young girl named Alice. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice spots a White Rabbit while reading in a meadow. Due to her curiosity, she follows him into an unknown area and down a rabbit hole, without a concern to where she may arrive. She continues to fall for what seems to be forever but eventually finds she has arrived in Wonderland. Here, she encounters unique and anthropomorphic creatures that are all "mad." Alice's encounters with each, allows the reader to go gradually deeper into the mind of Carroll. Like that of Alice adventures in Wonderland, through the looking glass also takes place in a similarly bizarre world, with many of the same characteristics of Wonderland. She arrives this time by stepping into a mirror. Everything here is contrary and unlike of that of her. Seeming to be the opposite, as if she was peering into a mirror, Alice has to learn how to survive in these unknown worlds that she is trapped in. Cliff Saunders, literature critic, says “Like our dreams, this world seems chaotic and insane at first, but a certain logic almost always manifests itself, a symbolic logic that eventually takes control of the dream and demands allegiance from the dreamer.”

Carroll was...

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