Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll's Alice may be one of the most recognizable and culturally relevant characters ever invented. The novel is a runaway classic, and it has been made into countless films, poems, parodies, and plays, and has become a staple of the counterculture. Tim Burton's dark take on the story become one of the biggest grossing films of the year, proving that the story of a little girl encountering strange and unusual creatures is still relevant and popular today.
Alice is a delightful person who undergoes various changes as the novel progresses. At the beginning, she is curious and perhaps a little too smart for her own good. She isn't content to sit and listen to her sister read. When the opportunity for adventure comes along, she dives right in, not yet savvy enough to consider the consequences. However, Alice's love of nonsense is challenged left and right. It is clear that Alice has been raised a privileged child in the Victorian era; she is educated, (thought no so much so as she would like to think,) self-entitled, relatively used to things going her way, and spoiled. Despite all this, she has been reared vigorously in the stringent notions of good manners, and therefore tries to be kind to everyone she meets, if only at a surface level.
Wonderland, unfortunately, is a place brimming with characters who are dismissive and blatantly rude. People are callous to her left and right, and those who do speak to her write her off immediately. She's insulted and berated by everyone she meets, challenging Alice's strict rules about courtesy and manners. When faced with this unkindness, Alice clings desperately to her raising, and is confused when the world doesn't give it back to her. It is Alice's desperate normalcy that brings about her apparent madness towards the end; trying to stay with the normal reality she knows in an obviously abnormal place is enough to give on an identity crisis, and so it is with Alice.
Her famous conversation with the Caterpillar reveals Alice's personal confusion. When he asks her who she is, she replies, "I... I hardly know, Sir, just at present-- at least know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." All the peculiar insanity of Wonderland has taken its toll on her sense of self, and it is only during this revelation that Alice begins to mature. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a book about a young girl learning that school knowledge can only get you so far, that not every problem has a solution, and that not everything makes sense. This inevitable loss of childhood innocence is a tragedy in itself, and Alice rises to the occasion. By the end of the novel, Alice has been transformed from a bored, spoiled little girl into a child more aware of the world around her, and this curious transformation has given the world one of the greatest novels (and heroines) in the history of literature.
Alice is a delightful person who undergoes various changes as the novel progresses. At the beginning, she is curious and perhaps a little too smart for her own good. She isn't content to sit and listen to her sister read. When the opportunity for adventure comes along, she dives right in, not yet savvy enough to consider the consequences. However, Alice's love of nonsense is challenged left and right. It is clear that Alice has been raised a privileged child in the Victorian era; she is educated, (thought no so much so as she would like to think,) self-entitled, relatively used to things going her way, and spoiled. Despite all this, she has been reared vigorously in the stringent notions of good manners, and therefore tries to be kind to everyone she meets, if only at a surface level.
Wonderland, unfortunately, is a place brimming with characters who are dismissive and blatantly rude. People are callous to her left and right, and those who do speak to her write her off immediately. She's insulted and berated by everyone she meets, challenging Alice's strict rules about courtesy and manners. When faced with this unkindness, Alice clings desperately to her raising, and is confused when the world doesn't give it back to her. It is Alice's desperate normalcy that brings about her apparent madness towards the end; trying to stay with the normal reality she knows in an obviously abnormal place is enough to give on an identity crisis, and so it is with Alice.
Her famous conversation with the Caterpillar reveals Alice's personal confusion. When he asks her who she is, she replies, "I... I hardly know, Sir, just at present-- at least know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." All the peculiar insanity of Wonderland has taken its toll on her sense of self, and it is only during this revelation that Alice begins to mature. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is a book about a young girl learning that school knowledge can only get you so far, that not every problem has a solution, and that not everything makes sense. This inevitable loss of childhood innocence is a tragedy in itself, and Alice rises to the occasion. By the end of the novel, Alice has been transformed from a bored, spoiled little girl into a child more aware of the world around her, and this curious transformation has given the world one of the greatest novels (and heroines) in the history of literature.
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