Neil Gaiman’s Going Wodwo and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

Alice of Alice in Wonderland seeks to experience a new path of life in “a world of nonsense.” This idea relates to Neil Gaiman’s Going Wodwo, because both characters leave their ordinary life to gain the experience of “nonsense.” Alice, starting to become bored with her studies, begins to day dream of a world that is precisely the opposite of the time she was living in, the Victorian era. During the journeys of Alice and the Wodwo, both experience three key settings: escape from their world, the search for acceptance in the new world, and the hardships of finding their way home.

Alice had very many high expectations in her mannerisms: the way she spoke, presented herself and especially her body language. She was quickly growing tired of these requirements. She was seeking to escape from her high strung environment and enter her own world by saying,”…if I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.” In Going Wodwo, the character is “… [searching] for … a spring of sweet water…” implying that the water he was drinking was stale and had no positive taste. The Wodwo's "water" was the element of excitement in his life. He wants to deviate his life by leaving his civilization in exchange for life in the forest. The Wodwo knows he will find this madness in the forest because he says, “True madness takes us or leaves is in the forest.” He soon experiences the nonsense when he says, “Sense left with shoes and house.” Alice and the Wodwo, alike, crave adventure. They seek independence from the societal norms and they do so without a single friend.

Alice’s scene changes from boredom to excitement promptly with the white rabbit as he scrambles to the rabbit hole, because “[he] is late!” Alice is quite confused. She is i...

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...eil. “Going Wodwo.” The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. Ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling. New York, NY, 2002. Pg. 18-19. Print.

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