Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Analysis

In many ways, human beings possess a strong desire to understand each other. This understanding is used to form friendships, to solve personal problems, and, at times, to prevent the world from making the same mistakes it has in the past. Nowhere is the desire for human understanding more evident than in the study of literature. To expand knowledge beyond the people of today, literature empowers people to paint a picture of what history was like by analyzing the works of writers from the past. Many students understand the Victorian Era through the works of Dickens, but perhaps a more complete vision of the Victorian Era can be formed through Lewis Carroll. The symbolism in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland reflects the struggles

As she sorted through several critical literary books and papers in hopes of better understanding Victorian literature, she found that almost all analyses of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were similar in that they were all grounded in Freudian psychology. This means that literary interpretations of the book heavily emphasised the role of Lewis Carroll’s subconscious more than anything else, further implying that many of the bizarre characters and events that exist in Wonderland were dismissed as mere expressions of Lewis Carroll’s supposed insanity rather than conscious symbolism. However, if one chooses to take a different approach at interpreting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, he will find that the seemingly nonsensical elements of Wonderland can reasonably reflect certain aspects of the reality of the Victorian Era. One such approach is that of Lydia Murdoch, who argues that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about children becoming adults and the hardships they face when exploring the real world. In her article entitled “Alice and the Question of Victorian Childhood,” Murdoch uses the shifting role of children during the Victorian Era to suggest that Alice’s attitudes and behaviors, especially during the events towards the beginning of the book, are meant

This is, of course, the part where Alice first changes her size. To fit through the small door, Alice drinks from a bottle that shrinks her. Once she becomes small enough to fit through the door, she notices that she left the key on top of the table. In The Anatomy of Story, John Truby notes that the purpose of changing the physical size of a character is often to show how the character relates to his environment. By shrinking Alice, Lewis Carroll’s intention may be to show how big the adult world is compared to children (174). After Alice eats the piece of cake that makes her larger, she begins to cry after she realizes that she can no longer fit through the tiny door. When she shrinks again, Alice drowns in the ocean created by her own tears, symbolizing how, in adulthood, people suffer the consequences of their own actions and emotional outbursts (Truby