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  • Essay / Psychological Analysis of Alice in Wonderland

    Lewis Carroll's wonderful story, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is familiar to almost everyone. The complex use of the dream state and the imagination of a young girl, Alice, come together, colliding in the most bizarre and seductive ways. An almost blurry story to many, Alice begins her journey as she falls down a rabbit hole in her backyard. She faces many challenges and meets a handful of characters, each more remarkable and more difficult to understand than the last. Although known to many, this children's story goes deeper, containing meanings and messages far deeper than one might imagine. Dissecting this novel, it is evident that Carroll's care with words, his sense of logic and fantasy is what makes this story and its multiple messages so remarkable. Through Alice's expedition and his interactions with various figures, Lewis Carroll was able to reflect several concepts, including symbolism in exposition, characters, and events; all on the theme of childhood in the Victorian era. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayThe psychological state of author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll) has been questioned endlessly since the publication of her book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Those who have carefully studied Carroll's work have noted a common theme of chaos, perhaps stemming from his own "distorted life, beginning at an early age." Others have suggested that Carroll's inspiration for this book had a lot to do with his social life, involving his interest in little girls. A historian said: “Single all his life, bound by a strict conscience of chastity, Lewis Carroll found in a sublimated friendship with little girls the emotional release that most men seek in love and marriage…” He goes on to talk about how Carroll often sent letters to these children; all subtly hinting at a theme of love and romance, but practically disguised as a letter of playful nonsense. This makes sense, given that the character Alice was named and based on the appearance of Alice Pleasance Liddell, the young daughter of a dean at Oxford, where he had attended. Also written into the story was the child's sister: Lorina Liddell and Edith Liddell as Lory and Eaglet. However, this accusation has been pulled in several directions, as others insist that, alongside the letters, Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland simply to amuse and comfort an estranged child of his when he was ill. His lack of a spouse could have been a factor in his alleged actions, but regardless of these crazy tendencies, Carroll was an intelligent man who used his free time to construct his stories with purpose and as an almost logical fantasy. crazy, unknown territory can be defined as “…a book where everyone takes a little madness as an antitoxin against the assured solidity of a world that is not what it seems” (Henry Seidel Canby, An Introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1932). Carroll communicated this "antitoxin" of a dream in a variety of ways of writing, including manipulation of words and/or phrases, mathematical logic, stanzas of poetry, and a perfect amount of utter nonsense. Carroll's mock turtle and griffin talked to Alice about school topics, including "totter", "twist", "drag", "stretch" and "faint";all these obvious parodies on every child's elementary study of reading, writing, drawing, sketching and painting. A pigeon claims that Alice must be a snake through a syllogism based on mathematical laws: "I've seen many little girls in my time, but never one with a neck like that!" No, no! You are a serpent; and there is no point in denying it. The known fact in this situation is that girls do not have long necks.and snakes have long necks. In front of the pigeon stands long-necked Alice. The pigeon follows the rules of a simple syllogism to coherently express that Alice is a snake... even though she is not. This is just one example of how Carroll uses the laws of mathematics to convey a logical but illogical point. He does this another time in the novel when "...with a bang he launches into a fallacious syllogism, that unmarked bottles of poison must be safe to drink" (Henry Seidel Canby, An Introduction to the Adventures of 'Alice in Wonderland, 1932). Although very arithmetic, Carroll is also called a "poet logician", because the poems seem to be found almost at every turn of the page. However, the poems were simply revised by Carroll to fit the current event, and were not originally written. by him. All the rhymes in Alice in Wonderland are imitations or parodies of older, once-familiar poems. For example, when Alice falls down the rabbit hole, she no longer understands her identity. She recites a poem to make sure, beginning with "How does the little crocodile improve his shining tail...". This is a parody of Isaac Watt's "Against Idleness and Mischief", as it originally begins with "How the busy little bee makes every bright hour better..." This is again found in the song from the Duchess to the baby pig, when she says: "Speak rudely to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes." This echoes GW Langford’s “Speak Gently,” which says “Speak gently; it's better far away. Rule by love rather than fear…” There are several other examples of this parody of poems in the book, including the revision of poems by poets such as Robert Southey, Jane Taylor, and James M. Sayle. It is through these means of writing that Carroll is able to expose a deeper message of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in an advanced and beautiful way. Alice meets several varied characters and personalities as she ventures through Wonderland. Some were full of nonsense, while others were a little sarcastic; but all played an important role in his journey. Throughout the novel, certain characters seemed to convey some sort of larger scale theme, moral or societal image when interacting with Alice. The first being Alice becomes interested in in this story is the White Rabbit, as he runs frantically to serve as the Queen's herald and jumps into the rabbit hole. Alice soon follows the anthropomorphic creature and soon finds herself in a fixed reality where time is altered and “space becomes strange” (Henry Seidel Canby, 1932). Time became relative for Alice when she saw the rabbit running with a clock in his palm, and even more so when she fell into what seemed to be an endless hole. According to Henry Seidel Canby in An Introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "Time is separate from gravity" (1932). The caterpillar to whom Alice turns for advice is also a remarkable character, considered an "abrupt person, insensitive to Morse code monosyllables" (Harry Morgan Ayres, Alice's Adventures in Education, 1936), the moral that we draw from it being of..