Alice's conversation with the Caterpillar is a concise summary of the story's themes. While it seems like the Caterpillar is speaking cryptically in order to confuse Alice, his words contain advice that represent a wise and mature view towards her worries. Each of the Caterpillar's responses address Alice's concerns about growing up and becoming older. The inclusion of the poem "Father William" is a direct answer to her fear of losing her childhood innocence. The Caterpillar's advice is a way of getting Alice to find her identity. The Caterpillar's first line is a direct question:. Alice not knowing how to respond is indicative of the lack of identity experienced by children as they grow older. As Alice responds by saying,. She has done several curious and strange things since entering wonderland, but none of them have helped her become closer to knowing who she is as a person. This is akin to children and teens experimenting to try to find out who they are and …show more content…
The caterpillar dismisses this: The reason he dismisses this is explained in the poem he has Alice recite, "Father William." The poem involves a young man reminding his father of his age, and his father responding by explaining why his age doesn't matter. Each rebuttal is meant to show how the father didn't mind becoming old because his youth helped form his identity. Like the father in the poem, the caterpillar is content with becoming a butterfly as it is a process of forming who he is. For the caterpillar, metamorphosis is a natural and inevitable part of his life; he isn't concerned about it even though he will change drastically when he becomes a butterfly. Alice is afraid of the process because she believes she will be changed permanently, unable to go back; the caterpillar's insistence on her repeating the poem is to show how that isn't the case and it's not a massive transformation such as
Lewis Carroll demonstrates paradoxes within Alice and Wonderland as Alice is tossed within an entirely different world. Yet one of the greatest paradoxes is the transformation of Alice over the course of the novel as well as the transformation of the duchess. Alice begins as an ignorant child; she has difficulties in morphing to the logic and needs of Wonder...
Additionally, Alice continues to feel different when she meets the caterpillar and the pigeon. For example when she is with the caterpillar he asks her to recite a poem back to him. The caterpillar didn’t know what the poem exactly stated, but he knew that Alice had known what the poem said. When she was reciting the poem he told her that she has got the poem all wrong. The caterpillar told her this so she could realize that she had changed and she wasn’t the same person that she thought that she was. The caterpillar then asks her “who are you?” When the caterpillar asks Alice this she has troubles explaining who she is. The cater...
...e at the end of the story, in which she herself dreams about the adventures Alice has just had. The adult Alice will have children of her own, and, perhaps, she will entertain them with the story of Wonderland. Indeed, the dream gains some reality when it is spread, as a story, to so many others.
The musical piece “Alice’s Theme” was composed in 2010 by composer Danny Elfman. This piece was written for Walt Disney Pictures’ “Alice in Wonderland”. Danny Elfman has represented Alice as lonely, questioning herself and anxious until the end of the film where she discovers her true purpose. Her journey is gradually revealed and represented through the different sections, instruments and lyrics. This is through the successful use of all the musical elements. These musical elements include duration, expressive devices, pitch, structure and texture.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story that has been loved and read by different age groups. Lewis Carroll wrote the book in such a way that the reader, young or old, could be trapped into Alice’s world of adventure. The illustrations by John Tenniel help portray the story beautifully. Tenniel put pictures to Carroll’s thoughts exactly. When a student reads Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the first time, it is always great if he or she could be introduced to his illustrations. However, it is a good idea for teachers to bring in different portals of Alice to help show how other people may view this little girl’s world. In addition, it will show that even though Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been written many years ago, people are still relating to Alice’s character. Overall, it is amazing to see how many different illustrators have portrayed Alice in a totally new and modern way, such Greg Hildebrandt. I decided to use Greg Hildebrandt’s illustrations to assist me in teaching about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because he portrays Alice as a much older looking girl. I believe this will help students understand how Alice’s character seemed older than seven years of age. He also depicts some of the characters as more humanlike than cartoon. I believe this will help students picture themselves into Alice’s world. In addition, Hildebrandt helps portray the bizarre story line that many people have come to love.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about a little girl who comes into contact with unpredictable, illogical, basically mad world of Wonderland by following the White Rabbit into a huge rabbit – hole. Everything she experiences there challenges her perception and questions common sense. This extraordinary world is inhabited with peculiar, mystical and anthropomorphic creatures that constantly assault Alice which makes her to question her fundamental beliefs and suffer an identity crisis. Nevertheless, as she woke up from “such a curious dream” she could not help but think “as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been ”.
One of the main purposes for writing Alice in Wonderland was not only to show the difficulties of communication between children and adults. In this story, almost every adult Alice talked to did not understand her. At times she messed up what they were saying completely as well, which many times stick true to real life circumstances. This book shows that kids and adults are on completely separate pages on an everlasting story. Carroll points out that sometimes children, like Alice, have a hard time dealing with the transition from childhood to adulthood, 'growing up.' Alice in Wonderland is just a complicated way of showing this fact. Lewis Carroll's ways with words is confusing, entertaining, serious, and highly unique all at the same time. And it's safe to say that it would be difficult to replicate such and imaginative technique ever again (Long 72).
He manages to get through the entire story, and the group happily returns home at the end of the day. The last stanza ends the poem by opening the beginning of the story of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by alluding to its childish and dreamlike theme. Carroll composed this poem as an epigraph for the novel in order to maintain the personal feeling of telling the story to the Liddell girls out loud.
Many have compared life to a journey over the course of which, one experiences many tumultuous changes and transitions. On this journey, the human body continually undergoes a developmental pattern of physical, mental, and social modifications. Even in the realm of literature, fictional characters inevitably follow this fate. In literature, the stage between childhood innocence and adulthood transforms characters, this is frequently referred to as "coming of age". Because all humans experience this transition, it establishes "coming of age" as a timeless universal literary theme. Among such "coming of age" novels is Lewis Carroll’s tale about a seven-year-old Victorian girl named Alice. In the novel, "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland", Alice falls into the curious world of Wonderland. Alice assuages and manages inter-conflicts, such as her identity. Through the confusion, experimentation, and uncertainties of the Wonderland between childhood and adulthood Alice realizes in her unconscious state that she is changing from simple child into a young woman.
Lewis Carroll's Wonderland is a queer little universe where a not so ordinary girl is faced with the contradicting nature of the fantastic creatures who live there. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a child's struggle to survive in the condescending world of adults. The conflict between child and adult gives direction to Alice's adventures and controls all the outstanding features of the work- Alice's character, her relationship with other characters, and the dialogue. " Alice in Wonderland is on one hand so nonsensical that children sometimes feel ashamed to have been interested in anything so silly (Masslich 107)."
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland follows the story of young Alice trapped in the world of Wonderland after falling down through a rabbit-hole. The rabbit-hole which is filled with bookshelves, maps, and other objects foreshadows the set of rules, the ones Alice is normally accustomed to, will be defied in Wonderland. This conflict between her world and Wonderland becomes evident shortly after her arrival as evinced by chaos in “Pool of Tears” and Alice brings up the main theme of the book “was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I am not the same, the next question is who am I?” (Carroll 18). After Alice fails to resolve her identity crisis using her friends, Alice says “Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here til I’m somebody else” (Carroll 19). Hence in the beginning, Alice is showing her dependency on others to define her identity. Nevertheless when her name is called as a witness in chapter 12, Alice replies “HERE!” without any signs of hesitation (Carroll 103). Close examination of the plot in Alice in Wonderland reveals that experiential learning involving sizes leads Alice to think logically and rationally. Alice then attempts to explore Wonderland analytically and becomes more independent as the outcome. With these qualities, Alice resolves her identity crisis by recognizing Wonderland is nothing but a dream created by her mind.
The characters in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are more than whimsical ideas brought to life by Lewis Carroll. These characters, ranging from silly to rude, portray the adults in Alice Liddell’s life. The parental figures in Alice’s reality, portrayed in Alice in Wonderland, are viewed as unintellectual figures through their behaviors and their interactions with one another. Alice’s interactions with the characters of Wonderland reflect her struggles with adults in real life. Naturally curious as she is, Alice asks questions to learn from the adults.
When in Wonderland, Alice met some strange characters. She was quick to judge them all. The Cat then Alice about the people in Wonderland, “’Oh, you ca’n’t help that,” said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here, I’m mad. You’re mad’” (Carroll 74). The Cat is symbolic of a realist. He tells Alice that everybody is crazy, which is true. However, part becoming an adult is realizing that everyone has flaws. This relates to the theme of growing up because Alice is learning what it takes to become an adult. The Cat shows Alice this message of life by using the characters of
The life cycle of a butterfly is perhaps one of the most beautiful and astounding processes in nature. The four stages a butterfly goes through to become the beautiful flying insects are just as interesting as the vibrant colors and patterns on the wings of the various species of butterflies. The four stages are as follows: the egg, the caterpillar, the pupa, and the emergence of the butterfly. Each stage is vital to the development of the adult butterfly. Perhaps the most interesting piece of the complicated puzzle that is the butterfly life cycle is the process of metamorphosis that happens in stage three. Similar to how a tadpole becomes a frog, a larva (caterpillar) morphs into a beautiful brilliantly colored butterfly.
Alice in Wonderland belongs to the nonsense genre, and even if most of what happens to Alice is quite illogical, the main character is not. “The Alice books are, above all, about growing up” (Kincaid, page 93); indeed, Alice starts her journey as a scared little girl, however, at the end of what we discover to be just a dream, she has entered the adolescence phase with a new way to approach the mentally exhausting and queer Wonderland. It is important to consider the whole story when analyzing the growth of the character, because the meaning of an event or a sentence is more likely to mean what it truly looks like rather than an explanation regarding subconscious and Freudian interpretations. Morton states “that the books should possess any unity of purpose seems on the surface unlikely” (Morton, page 509), but it’s better to consider the disconnected narrative and the main character separately, since the girl doesn’t belong to Wonderland, which is, as Morton says, with no intrinsic unity. Whereas, there are a few key turning points where it is possible to see how Alice is changing, something that is visible throughout her journey. Carroll wants to tell the story of a girl who has to become braver in order to contend with challenges like the pool made by her own tears, or assertive characters, like the Queen.