Fairy Tales and Defying Logic in Lewis Carroll’s "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland"

What characterizes a children's story as a fairytale? Is it the knights in shining armor, the happy ending, or the assumed innocence of the characters and the audience? Authors have long used these factors to reach acclaimed notoriety in the children’s writing world. But when it comes to Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, these characteristics are non-existent. He reveals to us that a fairy tales can defy logic and expectations. The complexity of Carroll’s ingenuity writing Alice in Wonderland has been dubbed an aspect of literary disobedience. The way he utilized childhood curiosity in his book opened our eyes to various perspectives of what’s sane and what isn’t.

With his writing skills compared to other writers during his time, Carroll was a misfit to society. He made us realize that everyone has their own viewpoint on how things should work but if a person’s viewpoint differs from another is that considered disobedience? Or how about a caterpillar smoking a hookah in front of a child, does that pass fairy tale standards?

Carroll’s word choice to name the first chapter, “Down the Rabbit Hole” shows a disregard for fairy tale norms right off the bat. Going down the rabbit hole is an allusion to consuming hallucinogenic drugs. This shows a break from fairy tale standards. Fairytales are usually innocent and naïve to please the young audience of readers. Carroll ignores the fact that little kids are easily influenced by their surroundings. From my knowledge, that’s why we have to be so cautious with our behavior or when we speak around little ones.

Similarly, the protagonist in Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia was about the same age as Alice. She experienced the same degree of curiosity as Alice when she chased the ma...

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... to be thin and have sexy curves. Alice is led to believe that mice are afraid of cats and dogs. In reality, everyone is aware that cats and mice have an innate hatred for each other not dogs and mice.

Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland message to us is that there’s nothing wrong with living free with your own imagination or bend the rules. In my opinion, I believe imagination is important but using it too much can leave you detached from reality Alice in Wonderland is a departure from this. Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever disguise, are meditations on life. Nowadays stories that were made to instruct children on how to acquire happiness have now been replaced with stories that teach children how to be in control of their life by including diseases, physical anomalies, and death to assure them that there’s nothing to be afraid of.