Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a book which is intended to be read by children. Before reading this book, I have been familiar with this story by watching the cartoon version of it, which was performed by the cartoon character – Hello Kitty. Attracting by its interesting plot, I decided to read it as my bed-time story before I fell asleep at night.
The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The Wonderland described in the tale plays with logic in ways that has made the story of lasting popularity with children as well as adults.
The book is often referred to by the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland. Some printings of this title contain both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass. This alternate title was popularized by the numerous film and television adaptations of the story produced over the years.
As the children’s book, it is easy to understand and create the picture in my mind. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the British mathematician and author, Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, written under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm populated by talking playing cards and anthropomorphic creatures.
This is the perfect book to share with young children, but I am in eighth grade and still love it. If you are looking for a funny, energetic, and family friendly story then you have found one in Alice in Wonderland.
A girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her older sister. She finds interest in a passing white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat and muttering "I'm late!", whom she follows down a rabbit-hole, floating down into a dream underworld of paradox, the absurd and the improbable. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has several misadventures. She grows to gigantic size and shrinks to a fraction of her original height; meets a group of small animals stranded in a sea of her own previously shed tears; gets trapped in the rabbit's house when she enlarges herself again; meets a baby which changes into a pig, and a cat which disappears leaving only his smile behind; goes to a never-ending tea party; plays a bizarre variation on croquet with an anthropomorphized deck of cards; goes to the shore and meets a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle; and finally attends the courtroom trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing some tarts. Eventually Alice wakes up underneath a tree back with her sister.
The most common perspective on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a whimsical fantasy. However, there is disagreement with this perspective. To a number of people, the book does not characterize whim and fantasy, but rather horror and self-sustaining Kafkaesque insanity. The comedy of the book, while clearly visible, does not mitigate the fact, but rather causes it to stand out by perverse contrast.
Taken from this perspective, the novel (as well as Through the Looking-Glass) is a sinister, pernicious world characterized by persons who exist fully by a self-sustaining logic that exists without reference to outside influence, including the influence of a sane, rational, and moral mind. By this perspective, at its essence, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is not a dream but a surreal nightmare involving loss of control, inability to communicate or reason, rampant uncontrolled change of one's self and everything around, and a total inability to gain any foundation in the world.
It is noteworthy that in both novels, people suffer for no reason. The White Rabbit has an air of deposed aristocracy, the Queen of Hearts orders executions for no reason other than her own irritation and enjoyment, the Hatter exists in a never ending tea party because he got in a fight with Time and it imprisoned him in Tuesday at 3:00, etc. Many of these are parables for the society of the time. For instance, from Through the Looking-Glass, the parable of The Walrus and the Carpenter appears to be a parable about the treatment of children and child-labor.
Thus, the very thing that produces appeal and wonder in the book for many people terrifies others. It is a world that exists in different cells, each with internally consistent rules that don't conform to any of the others, each continuing on its way with anything running from apathy to malice, and each able to persist in its state indefinitely. From a child's perspective, if one were to fall down a rabbit hole today one could easily encounter the very same terrifying Wonderland Alice did, changed in only the most vestigial of ways.
To be honesty, I seldom get some books to read on my own initiative. Gradually, I realize how important to read English novels widely. Since I fought that I could have fun and get a lot through reading English novels, I decided to cultivate my reading habit.
08英语1班
梁嘉琪
200830560143
