In Lewis Carroll’s sequel novel, Through the Looking Glass, Alice falls back asleep and revisits a Wonderland type of dream. In her dream a few of the characters from Carroll’s first novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, reappear. Because of their reappearance, and a few episodes of interactions, Alice is reminded that there is no reason or logic to her dream worlds, but along with this theory, for this particular dream world, everything is backwards. After Alice entered her new dream world, she met up with the Red Queen and was overlooking the valley when she came to the realization that the valley was marked out like a large chess-board. In Carroll’s novel, Through the Looking Glass, he bases the book off of a chess game, and there are many different elements throughout the …show more content…
The King sleeping, represents the inactivity of a King in an actual game of chess,making him bored and want to take a nap. The valley being marked out like a large chessboard foreshadows that there will a chess game to be played. Another one of the tell tale signs that there was an on-going chess game was the two Knight fighting over Alice, and the White Knight getting the victory. After the Knight’s victory over the Red Knight, he leads Alice through the forest, but moves in the exact same pattern that they move in the game of chess. The final element, and probably most important detail of a chess game would be Alice turning into a Queen. This is so significant because Alice started off as a Pawn and ended as a Queen. One of the rules in chess is that if a Pawn makes it to the other end of the board then they will become Queen, and that is exactly what happened to Alice. After waking from her dream, Alice realized the importance of chasing her goal and that if she follows her dreams, she will
In The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, the sweet nonsensical story of Alice in Wonderland is retold in an interestingly strange way that includes everything from war and rebellion, to love. Towards the beginning of the story Alyss is forced to leave Wonderland after having her castle ambushed by her evil Aunt Redd. Hatter Madigan, her mother’s trusted bodyguard, is told by Queen Genevieve herself to look after the young princess but is separated from her when they enter the Pool of Tears. He eventually finds her in england where she had been staying for the duration of her time on Earth, and takes her back to wonderland where she reclaims her throne. By altering this story, Bedder adds a more significant twist to what was a children’s book, creating many meaningful themes to go along with his version that develop throughout the novel. One example is taking responsibility, which is evident in many of the actions involving the characters Hatter Madigan, Alyss Heart, and Dodge Anders.
In Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars, There is a new take on the story of alice and wonderland. In the story alyss, the princess of wonderland has to flee her queendom after her evil aunt redd attacks and is split up with her guard. After that she falls in a portal and ends up surprisingly in England, though it would take almost 13 years, alyss would return to wonderland to fight for her throne as rightful queen. The authors change in the story makes the book have significance as well there are many themes developed throughout the book such as don’t give up which is shown by characters such as Dodge, Hatter, and Alyss.
Of course there is no sure way to prove that Carroll did not intend any deeper meaning into the story, after all, he was a mathematician and a man of great knowledge of children (19th Century Literature Criticism 105), but lets take a look at the most obvious fact – the time, place and audience of the original story of Alice in Wonderland. Here are the words of Lewis Carroll as he recalls that day: Full many a year has slipped away, since that “golden afternoon” that gave thee birth, but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday – the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces, hungry for news of fairyland, and who would not he say ‘nay’ to: from whose lips ‘Tell us a story, please,’ had all the stern immutability of Fate!
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor was a book that took a different angle at the classic story of Alice in Wonderland. The book was not just a lighthearted, wacky story about an English girl that stumbles down a rabbit hole and ends up in a world with talking caterpillars known as Wonderland. She is Wonderland’s heir to the throne and her mother, Genevieve, is the queen. Genevieve’s sister, Redd, is bent on revenge after being kicked out of the castle. She storms the castle and forcefully takes the throne, and Alyss is sent into another world and tries to find her way back to Wonderland to take back the throne. In order to do this, she has to gain a lot of responsibility starting from her childhood in Wonderland, teenage years in England,
Alice’s failure to understand the “native” culture, and her insistence on imposing her own norms and values ultimately culminates in a life-threatening situation.” (Binova “Underground Alice:” the politics of wonderland). Alice is the colonised in the situation with the Queen of Hearts. When she is introduced to the Queen her evil nature is revealed as she orders “Off with her head!” (Carroll 96). However, she is contrasted to Alice’s good nature while she shouts “Nonsense!” ( Carrol 96). The theme of chaos and confusion is brought forward as they play croquet all at once with noises all around and even in the court where everyone is expected to be civil. Although the Queen, as a character reinforces adulthood, subversion emerges again by Alice standing up for herself at this time. Nearing the end of her dream, she stands up against the Queen at court but it dream ends without a resolution. Maria Lassen-Seger says in ( “Subversion of Authority”: In “Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland”), “the relationship between the child and the adult is an impossible power relation in which the child is marginalised and considered powerless, thus, the adults suggest in their books what a child ought to be, what values and images it should accept.” The Queen at this point in the dream would have been the
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 ”.
He had insomnia and even Alice in Wonderland syndrome,which made it hard on him to sleep at night, but in which influenced Carroll even more to produce his famous writings and making his famous inventions. In Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, both contrast his life, since Alice is “sleeping” and dreaming in both. Alice in Wonderland syndrome, is a disease where one can begin to think there body is becoming smaller, and we see that in Through the Looking Glass Carroll writes, “the Queen was no longer at her side-- she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll…” (Carroll Ch. 9). He’s using advantage of his difficulties, which is smart, and putting them towards his writings, making him a strong inspiring writer.
By making subtle changes in the ways dreams are portrayed, she shows us that the boy has been changed by his experiences. Before “the betrayals” the dreams are quite indefinite, relying on incomplete images of pincers, claws and fangs to represent the horror. The lines, “His sidelong violence summoned/ fiends whose mosaic vision saw/ his heart entire” are literal indications of his incapability to comprehend what is happening to him. Then he wakes and attempts to seek comfort from the monstrance. His hopes for a miracle, brought on by his innocence, ...
As Karr puts it, “White pawn to black knight, I travel always towards your missing face.”(1). She references chess pieces not only because it was her favorite past time with her lover but also because she considered Coleman to be her black knight and she was the white pawn. She “travels” towards his missing face because she wishes to keep him in her heart forever. Her leaving town was not enough closure for her, therefore this poem is her coming to terms with his death and keeping his memory alive in the written form. It is uncertain how long the speaker is away from the town however, it is apparent that this experience left a lasting impression on her because she still thinks back and "travels" towards his missing face. She even has final words for him, "Coleman, you rode that ghost horse hard and recklessly against the dark, but could not break it." (1). She is again referencing him as a knight riding his horse, fighting against opposition. Whether it be his father or the white town boys he fought back in his own way which was not striking his father or the white boys back. This was the speaker thinking back about who Coleman was since she liked this aspect of him. As stated previously, she called him hiding his bruises quiet chivalry which was her way of admiring his fortitude. She remembers this as a sad time because Coleman has passed away however, its happy at the same time because of the time she spent with
Keats begins with the poem with a question, “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering?”. He does this to ask the “knight-at-arms” what has made him this weak, this pale, dying in a field somewhere and the knight’s answer takes up the rest of the poem. The imagery in my visual representation depicting a heart broken and weakened by the icy, deceptive lips of ‘femme fatale’ is both powerful and highly symbolic because it expresses the coldness and the deviousness of the deceptive witch that has weakened the knight. The icy cold lips of the witch symbolise her deceptive nature, and the way she tricks the knight into a deathly sleep, which is also visualised in my representation. His deathly sleep is also represented in a ‘before/after’ representation in which an image of the beautiful woman in the meadows is shown, and after his nightmare, the icy cold, desolate and dark hill side upon which the knight awakes is shown in the neighbouring image. The speaker says that the "sedge" have all died out from around the lake, and "no birds sing”. We can deduce that it 's autumn since all the birds have migrated, and the plants have “withered." The speaker continues to address this sick, depressed "knight at arms." He asks about the "lily" on the knight 's "brow," suggesting that the knight 's face is pale like a lily.
“’But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'” quoted by a very creative and imaginative author, Lewis Carroll, author of the hit Alice novels. This short novel was written by an extremely upright, ultra conservative man in which his unique character and many experiences had a great influence in the creation of Through the Looking Glass. Of all of Carroll’s works, Alice’s Through the Looking Glass, has a unique way of expressing adventures and stating the events in which occur throughout the whole novel making the novel standout in the category of whimsical, nonsense literature. The novel includes 12 chapters in which every new chapter brings you into different exotic settings introducing you to many peculiar characters involving the only and only Alice, the Tweedledum twins, Red Queen, White King, Humpty Dumpty Walrus and Carpenter. Meeting these characters brought her to finally achieving what her destination had been since the start; she finally became her normal size, making it into the garden. The events and settings involved with Through the Looking Glass make it a very fictional, imaginative novel. Carroll's imagination takes readers with Alice into where she finds the Looking-Glass House. Using the game of chess as the setting of his novel, he fills the novel with situations and puzzles from the ordinary to the extraordinary; including silly characters and adventures in which may be nonsensical, using the game of chess as the setting.
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.
Vallone, Lynne. Notes. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. By Lewis Carroll. New York: The Modern Library Classics, 2002.245-252. Print.
Carroll is unwilling to accept the fact that Alice is growing up and that their friendship is coming to an end. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice is portrayed as a child in need of help, much like how Alice needed Carroll. However in Through the Looking Glass, Alice is portrayed as older and independent. This is because Carroll sees Alice as years older than when he first wrote about her, despite her only being six months older in the book. Carroll in reminiscing on the way Alice used to spend time with him and he misses that friendship. His dependency on Alice is shown at the end of the White Knight’s scene through the White Knight’s insistence that she sees him off. The White Knight bringing Alice to the final brook to become a queen is Carroll’s way of showing that he needs to let Alice go in order for her to grow
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.