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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Book Review

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most famous and enduring children's classics. The novel is full of whimsical charm, and a feeling for the absurd that is unsurpassed. But, who was Lewis Carroll?

Charles Dodgson

Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was a mathematician and logician who lectured at Oxford University. He balanced both personas, as he used his study in the sciences to create his eminently strange books. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a charming, light book, that reputedly pleased Queen Victoria . She asked to receive the author's next work and was swiftly sent a copy of An Elementary Treatment of Determinants .

The book begins with young Alice, bored, sitting by a river, reading a book with her sister. Then Alice catches sight of a small white figure, a rabbit dressed in a waistcoat and holding a pocket watch, murmuring to himself that he is late. She runs after the rabbit and follows it into a hole. After falling into the depths of the earth, she finds herself in a corridor full of doors. At the end of the corridor, there is a tiny door with a tiny key through which Alice can see a beautiful garden that she is desperate to enter. She then spots a bottle labeled "Drink me" (which she does) and begins to shrink until she is small enough to fit through the door.

Unfortunately, she has left the key that fits the lock on a table, now well out of her reach. She then finds a cake labeled "Eat me" (which, again, she does), and is restored to her normal size. Disconcerted by this frustrating series of events, Alice begins to cry, and as she does, she shrinks and is washed away in her own tears.

This strange beginning leads to a series of progressively "​curiouser and curiouser" events, which see Alice babysit a pig, take part in a tea party that is held hostage by time (so never ends), and engage in a game of croquet in which flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls. She meets some extravagant and incredible characters, from the Cheshire Cat to a caterpillar smoking a hookah and being decidedly contradictory. She also, famously, meets the Queen of Hearts who has a penchant for execution.​

The book reaches its climax in the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts. A good deal of nonsense evidence is given against the unfortunate man, and a letter is produced which only refers to events by pronouns (but which is supposedly damning evidence). Alice, who by now has grown to a great size, stands up for the Knave and the Queen, predictably, demands her execution. As she is fighting off the Queen’s card soldiers, Alice awakes, realizing she has been dreaming all along.

Carroll's book is episodic and reveals more in the situations that it contrives than in any serious attempt at plot or character analysis. Like a series of nonsense poems or stories created more for their puzzling nature or illogical delightfulness, the events of Alice's adventure are her encounters with incredible but immensely likable characters. Carroll was a master of toying with the eccentricities of language.

One feels that Carroll is never more at home than when he is playing, punning, or otherwise messing around with the English tongue. Although the book has been interpreted in numerous ways, from an allegory of semiotic theory to a drug-fueled hallucination, perhaps it is this playfulness that has ensured its success over the last century.

The book is brilliant for children, but with enough hilarity and joy for life in it to please adults too, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a lovely book with which to take a brief respite from our overly rational and sometimes dreary world.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Caroll | Book Review

Book Review of  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland The Children’s Book Review

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Written by Lewis Carroll

Illustrated by Anna Bond

Ages: 10+ | 192 Pages

Publisher: Puffin Books | ISBN-13: 9780147515872

What to Expect: Adventure, Fantasy, and Classics

When it comes to beloved works of literature, few can compare to Lewis Carroll’s  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . This enchanting tale, considered a timeless classic, has captivated and delighted readers for generations for very good reason—if ever there was a tall tale, this might be the tallest.

At its heart,  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  is a story full of wonder and whimsy, centered around a young girl named Alice who longs for something more than her mundane existence. When she unexpectedly tumbles down a rabbit hole into an entirely new world known as Wonderland, readers are whisked away on a magical journey beyond their wildest imaginings.

Here, in Wonderland, Alice encounters all manner of curious characters, from the endlessly tardy White Rabbit (always rushing about with his pocket watch) to the puzzling Cheshire Cat (who becomes invisible except for his big grin) to the Hatter (who is completely mad) to the Queen of Hearts (who is very difficult to please) and beyond. There are riddles to solve, quirky poems, and a tea party Alice can’t wait to leave.

In the midst of all of the absurd happenings, Carroll weaves in a series of mind-bending riddles that keep readers guessing until the very end. But beyond the exquisite story, we cannot forget Anna Bond’s stunning and evocative illustrations in this Puffin in Bloom edition of the story, which bring the magical world of Wonderland to life in vivid, floral detail. 

Readers, young and old alike, will undoubtedly be spellbound by the allure of Alice in Wonderland. As sure as ferrets are ferrets, readers will be charmed by the words and fascinated by the illustrations.  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  is dreamy—you would be completely mad not to read this book!

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About the author.

Lewis Carroll is the pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Queen Victoria was one of the first well-known fans of his book  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  With royalty loving the book, it’s no wonder that the story has been adapted into multiple movies, live performances, and comic books.

What to Read Next If You Love Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

• Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There , by Lewis Carroll
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , by L. Frank Baum
• The Looking Glass Wars , by Frank Beddor
• Peter Pan , by J.M. Barrie

Bianca Schulze reviewed  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Discover more books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by reading our reviews and articles tagged with Adventure , Fantasy , and Classics .

What to Read Next:

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• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: The Chronicles of Narnia | Book Review
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Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

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Sergio García Sánchez, a cartoonist, illustrator and professor at the University of Granada, is a co-author, with Nadja Spiegelman, of the graphic novel “Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure.”

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“Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland”: Literary Analysis Essay (Critical Writing)

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Era, Purpose, and Literary Themes

Themes and personal impressions, pedagogical meaning.

Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland is a novel by Lewis Carrol (Charles Dodgson) first published in 1865 in the UK. Later the book was translated into 97 languages and never came out of print. Critics classify the novel as literary nonsense, although it can also be classified as a fantasy genre. This paper aims to analyze the story in terms of its central themes, its place in the children and young adults’ literature, and pedagogical aims of the text.

Interestingly, until the 19th century, children’s literature was slightly different from what readers see today. Most of the texts were instructive and religious and depicted children in highly realistic settings, perceiving them like mini-adults. The basics of grammar and reading were also based on purely religious texts such as prayers and Bible passages. However, at the end of the 18th century, John Locke first voiced the innovative concept that children should be interested in learning, that they should like the texts (“Once upon a time,” 2017). At the end of the 18th century, the novels of Jonathan Swift Gulliver and Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe were first published, which were perceived as a breakthrough in literature since they went beyond the realism genre. These novels were considered the first adventure novels for children.

In the 19th century, more authors appeared who sought to move away from the moral and religious canons that instructed children and taught them the rules of behavior. These were novels for children by Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, ETA Hoffmann, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frances Hodgson Burnett, John Ruskin, Hans Christian Andersen, Alexander Dumas, Brothers Grimm, Walter Scott, Washington Irving and other famous authors (“Once upon a time,” 2017). These writers introduced adults and young readers to a whole new world of literature, filled with vibrant colors of emotion and imagination. However, Lewis Carroll’s novel was perhaps too unusual and stood out even in this series. The reason could be the writer’s non-standard imagination and his sharp mind as a mathematician. Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland is a great example of pure abstraction devoid of internal contradictions.

The primary goal of the novel was to create a compelling story that children would love. However, it is believed that the book is rife with many criticisms, and most characters had real people as prototypes, as evidenced by the original illustrations for the novel. The chances are high that Lewis Carroll presented a critique of moral-religious literature used to educate children in previous centuries. The writer probably criticized the boring classics that were part of the educational program, remaking them into funny and absurd copies.

Despite the abstractness and some incoherence of the plot, the novel presents all the necessary topics for middle-grade readers of 8-13 years old. These are the themes like the value and power of friendship, the importance of emotions and relationships, such as accepting differences, courage, compassion, honesty, trust, and self-concept. The novel also introduces behavioral issues like coping with anger, generosity and delicacy, imagination and exploring possibilities, perseverance and persistence, and self-control. Lewis Carroll also revealed important life transition themes like growing up and articles related to social issues like fairness and equity and making a difference.

When I first read the novel, I was about nine years old, and many things seemed confusing and incredibly difficult to me. I was impressed by the author’s attitude, as he was kind of playing with me and admitting the absurdity of this complexity, which was, in a way, a form without essence. To this absurd flat form, which was personified primarily by the Queen of Hearts and her escort, the author contrasted the simple and magical world of Alice and her friends in Wonderland – the world of the White Rabbit, Caterpillar, Mouse, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and March Hare (Carrol, 2015). When I was a child, these characters seemed to be very voluminous and deep, in contrast to the characters of the jury, the duchess, and the queen. The Queen of Hearts’ Garden made an unforgettable impression on me; I was frightened and shocked by her absurd cruelty and sincerely marveled at Alice’s courage.

When I reread the novel as an adult, I found it amusing and straightforward, although still exciting and full of mysteries. I took the Queen of Hearts’ garden more like a farce, caricature, and satire than a description of the actual state of affairs. Unfortunately, the characters of Alice and her friends lost their depth in my imagination, and I felt that I was missing a lot of nuances. The plot unfolded for my adult mind too unpretentious, although it seemed very confusing to me as a child. However, I was still interested in rereading the novel because of the bright setting, although Alice’s many transformations were confusing.

It is noteworthy that novels for middle-grade children are usually rich in the complexity of topics and reveal new areas of life for children – such as the importance of friendship and relationships, a sense of justice, and willingness to fight for it. However, authors tend to use simple words and sentences not to confuse young readers who would have to look up the meanings of unfamiliar words too often (Sullivan, 2021). So it’s not surprising that when I reread the novel as an adult, it seemed too simple to me.

Pedagogical aims in the text are mainly related to themes of justice, compassion, and difference. As she alternately grows and shrinks, Alice constantly changes her position in the food chain, allowing her to understand small, vulnerable creatures better. Although she initially does not show attention to others’ feelings – like in the episode with the Mouse, she acquires this habit over time, for example, in the episode with the Griffin and the Quasi-Turtle.

Alice is shocked by constant changes and strange creatures, the logic of which seems utterly incomprehensible to her. Still, she learns to understand and accept their differences in the process of her adventures. Alice also learns to control her feelings, especially the feelings of anger that constant transformations cause in her. Facing her impotence, Alice learns to go into dialogue to get out of an unpleasant situation. For example, in the episode when Alice is searching White Rabbit’s fan and gloves or talking to the Caterpillar. By the end of the tale, when Alice listens to the long story of the Quasi-Turtle, she has already fully learned to control her feelings. She delicately maintains a dialogue, showing respect for its participants.

When I first read the novel, I certainly didn’t know that it had any ethical background. I was shocked by the murders and delighted with the characters of Alice and the Cheshire Cat. I also enjoyed rereading the tea-drinking scene over and over again. It seemed to me that since good and evil should be present in the book, the extremely cruel garden of the Queen of Hearts is compensation for the magical forest and its inhabitants. Now I understand that the author did not intend to oppose these two worlds; he wrote about what he saw and what his creative imagination dictated to him.

Thus, the novel’s main themes and pedagogical aims were analyzed. The book reveals the values and powers of friendship, embracing difference, courage, self-concept, dealing with anger, imagination and exploring possibilities, and self-control. The bright, colorful, and frankly absurd fantasy world of Lewis Carroll was in many ways criticism of religious and moral works for children that preceded the era of children’s adventure literature.

Carrol, L. (2015). Alice’s adventures in Wonderland . Princeton University Press.

Once upon a time: a brief history of children’s literature . (2021). Web.

Sullivan, K. (2021). Children’s literature genres: The difference between children’s lit, middle grade, YA, and new adult . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, June 25). “Alice's Adventure in Wonderland”: Literary Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alices-adventure-in-wonderland-literary-analysis/

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IvyPanda . 2022. "“Alice's Adventure in Wonderland”: Literary Analysis." June 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alices-adventure-in-wonderland-literary-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "“Alice's Adventure in Wonderland”: Literary Analysis." June 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alices-adventure-in-wonderland-literary-analysis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "“Alice's Adventure in Wonderland”: Literary Analysis." June 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alices-adventure-in-wonderland-literary-analysis/.

• Poem: “All in the golden afternoon”
• Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit-Hole
• Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears
• Chapter 3: A Caucus-Race and a long Tale
• Chapter 4: The Rabbit sends in a little Bill
• Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar
• Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper
• Chapter 7: A Mad Tea-Party
• Chapter 8: The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
• Chapter 9: The Mock Turtle’s Story
• Chapter 10: The Lobster Quadrille
• Chapter 11: Who stole the Tarts?
• Chapter 12: Alice’s Evidence
• An Easter Greeting to every child who loves Alice
• Christmas Greetings
• Dramatis Personae and chessboard
• Poem: “Child of the pure unclouded brow”
• Chapter 1: Looking-Glass House
• Chapter 2: The Garden of Live Flowers
• Chapter 3: Looking-Glass Insects
• Chapter 4: Tweedledum and Tweedledee
• Chapter 5: Wool and Water
• Chapter 6: Humpty Dumpty
• Chapter 7: The Lion and the Unicorn
• Chapter 8: “It’s my own Invention”
• Chapter 9: Queen Alice
• Chapter 10: Shaking
• Chapter 11: Waking
• Chapter 12: Which dreamed it?
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• Chapter 5: Bill, the Lizard
• Chapter 6: the dear little Puppy
• Chapter 7: The Blue Caterpillar
• Chapter 8: The Pig-Baby
• Chapter 9: The Cheshire-Cat
• Chapter 10: The Mad Tea-Party
• Chapter 11: The Queen’s Garden
• Chapter 12: The Lobster-Quadrille
• Chapter 13: Who stole the tarts?
• Chapter 14: The Shower of Cards
• The lost chapter: a Wasp in a Wig
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• Caterpillar
• Cheshire Cat
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• About the book “Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there”
• About John Tenniel’s illustrations
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An Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The following text is a small part of a project from: Maatta, Jerry. HII, Katedralskolan, Uppsala, Sweden, March 1997. (Former source of this article ) Reproduced with permission from the author.

Interpretations and opinions

I t is important to bear in mind that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, however special it may seem and however many different interpretations one thinks one can find, is, after all, but a story written to entertain Charles Dodgson’s favourite child-friends.

It is very obvious in the story that it was written for the three Liddell girls, of whom Alice was the closest to Dodgson. In the introductory poem to the tale, there are clear indications to the three, there named Prima, Secunda and Tertia — Latin for first, second and third respectively in feminized forms. The part considering rowing on happy summer days was derived directly from reality. It is said that he used to row out on picnics with the Liddell girls and tell them stories. On one of these excursions it started raining heavily and they all became soaked. This, it is said, was the inspiration to the second chapter of the book, The Pool of Tears. The ever-occurring number of three points out Dodgson always having in mind the three girls he tells the story to. It could, of course, having in mind the fact that he was a cleric, be the Christian Trinity or something completely different.

Many people have seen Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a prime example of the limit-breaking book from the old tradition illuminating the new one. They also consider it being a tale of the “variations on the debate of gender” and that it’s “continually astonishing us with its modernity”. From the looks of it, the story about Alice falling through a rabbit-hole and finding herself in a silly and nonsense world, is fairly guileless as a tale. The underlying story, the one about a girl maturing away from home in what seems to be a world ruled by chaos and nonsense, is quite a frightening one. All the time, Alice finds herself confronted in different situations involving various different and curious animals being all alone. She hasn’t got any help at all from home or the world outside of Wonderland. Lewis Carroll describes the fall into the rabbit-hole as very long and he mentions bookshelves on the sides of the hole. Perhaps it is an escape into literature he hints at. Carroll is an expert at puns and irony. The part with the mad tea-party is one of the best examples of this. There’s a lot of humour in the first Alice book, but in the second the mood gets a bit darker and more melancholic. The theme with Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes could reflect the ups and downs of adolescence with young people sometimes feeling adult and sometimes quite the opposite. The hesitation so typical of adolescent girls is reflected in Alice’s thoughts: “She generally gave herself good advice (though she very seldom followed it).” Many short comments point to teenage recklessness, restlessness and anxiety in all its different forms.

One other example of maturing is Alice getting used to the new sizes she grows. She talks to her feet and learns some of the new ways her body works in. Her feelings are very shaken from her adventures and she cries quite often when it’s impossible to obey the rules of the Wonderland — or is it adulthood? “Everything is so out-of-the-way down here”, as Alice often repeats to herself. Alice doesn’t like the animals in Wonderland who treat her as a child, but sometimes she gets daunted by the responsibility she has to take. The quote “Everyone in Wonderland is mad, otherwise they wouldn’t be down here” told by the Cheshire Cat can be given an existential meaning. Is it that everyone alive is mad being alive, or everyone dreaming him- or herself away is mad due to the escape from reality? Time is a very central theme in the story. The Hatter’s watch shows days because “it’s always six o’ clock and tea-time”. Time matters in growing up, I guess, but further interpretations are left unsaid. The poem in chapter 12 hints at forbidden love, and it is entirely possible that it is about his platonic love for children, or Mrs. Liddell, for that matter. Considering the fact, that the first manuscript was called Alice’s Adventures Underground, and that some — at least the Swedish — translation of the title is a bit ambiguous, it becomes more apparent, that the world Alice enters isn’t just any childrens’ playground, but a somewhat frightening and dangerous place for maturing. The “underground” part of the old title undeniably suggests drawing parallells to the direction of Dante or the Holy Bible.

Continuing in this direction, the wonderful garden, into which Alice wants to get, can be a symbol of the Garden of Eden. It can be assumed that Dodgson, being a cleric and a strictly religious man, had read and was very familiar with the biblical myths aswell as Milton’s Paradise Lost. It becomes more interesting when Alice finally gets into the garden and finds a pack of cards ruling it, with a very evil queen at its head. It appears to be a way of saying that even The Garden of Eden can be in chaos, or that the garden isn’t really what it appears to be. Or, having in mind his Victorian irony in the tale, a way of saying that our lives on Earth are, in fact, the closest we can get to a paradise, and that it is ruled my a malignous queen with little respect for human lives. These theories are, of course, merely speculations and it would be quite rude to suggest even madder parallells, which isn’t at all difficult with a childrens’ story of this kind.

Some people have gone very far in their claims that Lewis Carroll wrote the stories while influenced by opium. They say the fifth chapter with the smoking Blue Caterpillar is about drugs. These claims have no real evidence or facts to point at, and it seems that they’re just mad rumours made up by people who want to see more than there is in a fairy tale. It is fairly obvious that the visions of the stories derive from the genious of a man, and not from drug influence. If the worlds in the books are somewhat surreal it surely comes from Dodgson having a vivid imagination and an ability to make nonsense worlds alive. He definitely had his share of problems, but drugs don’t seem to have been one of them. At a closer look, there seems to be a whole lot of anguish in the story. This becomes even more apparent in the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and its introductory poem, where the following can be found: “I have not seen thy sunny face, / Nor heard thy silver laughter; / No thought of me shall find a place / In thy young life’s hereafter—”. The part surely expresses Dodgson’s feelings for missing the young girl Alice used to be before growing up.

Perhaps the first story is more like a description of a young friend growing up and disappearing out of one’s life by becoming an adult, and as such, out of Dodgson’s reach. Dodgson lost contact with Alice Liddell in 1868, a few years before the publishing of the sequel. It seems that the first book is a tribute to a friend who, in time, will be lost to Dodgson, and that the sequel is, considering its tone, an epitaph. This is clearly seen in the last lines (actually, it’s just one long sentence) of the first story when Alice’s sister thinks of Alice:

“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman ; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long-ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child- life, and the happy summer days.”

It appears to be Dodgson’s own thoughts about the girl growing up expressed through one of Alice’s sisters. Another quote that expresses Dodgson’s feelings for getting old found in the same introduction mentioned above: “We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near.” This melancholy tone of Dodgson’s can be found in various parts of the sequel, which expresses his grief of losing the close friend he once had before she grew up and vanished. The very last poem in the sequel begins its lines with letters that make up “Alice Pleasance Liddell” — her complete name. Charles Dodgson’s academic education shows in his books. The exotic fantasy creatures who inhabit the worlds of his imagination all have very peculiar names made up from real words in English, French and Latin. For example, the Dormouse is a sleeping mouse. Dormire in Latin means to sleep, while there’s no need to explain the rest of the word.

It is very difficult to decide on or write a conclusion to a project concerning so intricate subjects as this. I’ve tried to show some different interpretations and keep the whole project as objective as possible. The subject is vast and there could probably be years spent on it without reaching a definitive answer, and therefore I suggest people use their own imagination, common sense and logic when discussing the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. One of the few certain things are that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson really loved children and dedicated his works for them. Whether this love of his was sexual or platonic is almost impossible to decide with the few indications he left after him.

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Book Review: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, is a rather peculiar adventure tale filled with all sorts of oddities and misfits. The story begins with the main protagonist, Alice, as she follows the White Rabbit into the infamous rabbit hole. In Wonderland, or so it seems, she meets several creatures all with the strangest backstories and personalities. The story is carefully crafted so that much of the book confuses the casual reader. A great concern for detail is needed to understand the novel and its full meaning. The book shares the complexities and hardships of growing up, in which the Lewis Carroll absolutely nailed. He also shares his negative opinions about the British government through the main antagonist, the Queen of Hearts, who is meant to be a high and powerful monarch, but never does anything. Overall, the book is a great read and it is certainly entertaining to spend some time to pick out the many small details hidden in the book. 8th Grade.

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Alice in Wonderland (Book Review)

Reviewed by Bruce Heydt By Lewis Carroll Available in many editions, both soft and hardcover

Within the pages of Lewis Carroll’s signature novel, Alice in Wonderland, the worlds above and below the famous rabbit hole nowhere intersect. Above the hole the reader finds calm and order, bright sunlight and the gently flowing Thames. Down below, the laws of nature and logic have been turned on their heads. Seemingly, never the twain shall meet.

Things are not always as they first appear, however. For a century and more, children have enjoyed the sheer silliness of Wonderland’s residents, but to the initiated they are a wry reflection of Carroll’s Victorian-era England, or at least Victorian England as Carroll himself perceived it.

The reign of Britain’s very own aboveground Queen of Hearts was a time of rapid change, exemplified by advances in science and by the Industrial Revolution—as well as by an increasing subservience to schedules and timetables that created a manic, rabbitlike response to the dread of running late. (The white rabbit is, in fact, a dead-ringer for every railway conductor I’ve ever met.) Even while industrialization transformed Britain, 18th-century social customs—most notably a rigid class structure in which every card had its proper place in the deck—lingered on.

Carroll himself was something of a square peg in Victorian Britain’s round hole, and he viewed the world into which he had fallen, through no fault of his own, as a Wonderland in many ways no more strange than Alice’s. A mathematician himself, Carroll had a keen sense of logic and order. He also had a sense of the absurd, and saw many of the intellectual trends of his day in the latter light. In contrast to the mock intellectualism of adults, Carroll seems to prefer the innocent common sense of children, who therefore became, like Alice, the heroines of most of his stories. Alice’s greatest challenge in Wonderland often seems not to be how to return to the aboveground world, as might be expected, but in remaining uninfected by the dangerous and surreal logic of the “adult” Wonderlanders she encounters—an ultimately futile endeavor, since Alice, along with every other little girl, is on an inevitable progress toward adulthood herself. The journey, however, often proceeds in fits and starts and takes many false turns, as Alice discovers to her ongoing frustration when she alternately shrinks and grows at the mere sip of drink or bite of cake. That alone would be frightening enough even without the possibility—a very real one, as Alice learns—that any child may grow up to become a “pig.”

Despite its unpredictability, Wonder land is seductive and almost preferable to the real (but bland by comparison) contemporary world. Readers can safely give in to its enticements by joining Alice as she tumbles down the rabbit hole. The creatures and situations that visitors to Wonderland will encounter include, famously, a grinning Cheshire cat, a maddeningly absurd tea party, a sagacious caterpillar, a mind-bending croquet match, a thieving knave and a queen with an attitude who seems more than capable of bringing the entire world under her dominion. (Presumably, the real monarch would not have been amused by any suggestion of a simi larity.) So well-known are these creations that Carroll’s imagery is said to be more frequently alluded to than is any other literary source, save only the Bible and Shakespeare.

Today’s readers have an abundance of editions to choose from when settling down with this classic, perhaps with a child or grandchild on their knee. Do select one that contains the original illustrations by John Tenniel, which have become classics in their own right, or perhaps the edgier color images of Arthur Rackham.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , widely beloved British children’s book by Lewis Carroll , published in 1865. With its fantastical tales and riddles , it became one of the most popular works of English-language fiction. It was notably illustrated by British artist John Tenniel .

The story centres on Alice, a young girl who falls asleep in a meadow and dreams that she follows the White Rabbit down a rabbit hole. She has many wondrous, often bizarre adventures with thoroughly illogical and very strange creatures, often changing size unexpectedly (she grows as tall as a house and shrinks to 3 inches [7 cm]). She encounters the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, the Duchess (with a baby that becomes a pig), and the Cheshire Cat , and she attends a strange endless tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare . She plays a game of croquet with an unmanageable flamingo for a croquet mallet and uncooperative hedgehogs for croquet balls while the Queen calls for the execution of almost everyone present. Later, at the Queen’s behest, the Gryphon takes Alice to meet the sobbing Mock Turtle , who describes his education in such subjects as Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision . Alice is then called as a witness in the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who is accused of having stolen the Queen’s tarts. However, when the Queen demands that Alice be beheaded, Alice realizes that the characters are only a pack of cards, and she then awakens from her dream.

The story was originally told by Carroll to Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell (the daughters of Henry George Liddell , dean of Christ Church, Oxford , where the author had studied and held a fellowship) on a picnic in July 1862. Alice asked Carroll to write out the stories for her, and in response he produced a hand-lettered collection entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground . A visitor to the Liddell home saw the storybook and thought it should be published, so Carroll revised and expanded it. Appearing at a time when children’s literature generally was intended to teach moral lessons, the book at first baffled critics, who failed to appreciate the nonsense that so captivated its young readers. But Carroll understood how children’s minds worked, and the way he turned logic on its head appealed to their sense of the ridiculous. In the riddles and the poems—such as “How doth the little crocodile” and “You are old, Father William” (both parodies of well-known didactic poems)—he reached even more absurd heights. The work attracted a following and led to a sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (dated 1872 but published in December 1871). By the end of the 19th century, Alice (taking the two volumes together) had become the most popular children’s book in England, and within two more decades it was among the most popular storybooks in the world. It inspired numerous films, theatrical performances, and ballets as well as countless works of scholarly analysis.

A Summary and Analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Through the Looking-Glass , the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , was first published in 1871; according to Alice Liddell, the young girl who inspired Lewis Carroll to write the Alice books, Through the Looking-Glass had its origins in the tales about the game of chess that Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) used to tell Alice and her sisters when they were learning to play the game. Below, we offer a brief plot summary of the novel, followed by some analysis of its meaning – or rather, possible meanings.

Through the Looking-Glass : plot summary

The novel begins with Alice sitting indoors on a winter afternoon, curled up in an armchair with her kitten for company. As the snow falls outside, Alice asks her kitten to imitate one of the chess pieces in front of them. When the kitten fails to comply, Alice holds it up in the mirror and threatens to expel it to ‘Looking-Glass House’.

To her surprise, Alice now finds herself transported into a looking-glass world which is arranged as a giant chessboard, but with various other features, such as gardens of flowers, present. She finds a poem which she cannot read, because its words are back-to-front.

Many of the subsequent ‘moves’ in the novel actually follow the rules of the game of chess (for instance, the Queens tend to move about looking-glass world a lot, while their husbands, the Kings, largely remain where they are throughout the novel), and the characters – including the Red Queen and White Queen, are chess pieces come to life.

Having spoken with some talking flowers in a garden and met the Red Queen, Alice finds herself being whisked onto a train, with her fellow passengers including a gnat, a goat, and a man dressed in white paper meant to represent Benjamin Disraeli, the Tory politician. The train then takes off, and Alice finds herself in a wood where nothing has a name (she even forgets her own), and where she meets the fat twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee .

These twins, who – in keeping with the looking-glass theme – are meant to be mirror-images of each other, sing a song called ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ (which we’ve analysed here ), and fall out over a rattle, before the White Queen whisks Alice off again, telling her that the rule in this looking-glass world is ‘jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today ’.

The White Queen then turns into a sheep, which is busy knitting behind the counter of a shop whose stock disappears whenever Alice tries to focus on it on the shelves. The shop transforms into a boat, and then back into a shop, and when the Sheep/White Queen tries to straighten an egg wobbling on a shelf, we find ourselves in the countryside with a large egg, with arms and legs, sitting on a wall: Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty explains the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ to Alice, which is the poem she encountered as mirror-writing when she first entered looking-glass world. (We offer a more detailed commentary on the poem here .) After he has done so, however, he falls off the wall, as in the nursery rhyme , and the King’s horses and King’s men come to try to put him back together. The ‘King’ here is the White King from the chess game.

Next, Alice goes to see the Lion and the Unicorn fighting over the crown (an allusion to the heraldic animal symbols of England and Scotland respectively, as seen on Britain’s coat of arms). However, many critics have interpreted the Lion as representing the Liberal politician (and UK Prime Minister at the time) William Ewart Gladstone and the Unicorn as the Tory politician, Benjamin Disraeli.

The White Knight, an inventor, sings a song, and Alice finds herself on a new square of the chessboard with a crown on her head: the pawn has become a queen. Sandwiched between the White Queen and the Red Queen, Alice is analysed by them both and deemed not worthy to be a queen like them.

Alice then finds herself at a feast between the Red Queen and White Queen, a banquet where even the food can talk. Overcome with frustration, Alice shakes the Red Queen, who grows smaller in her hands until she turns into Alice’s own kitten, and just like that, Alice leaves the looking-glass world behind and is back in our world.

Through the Looking-Glass : analysis

Through the Looking-Glass has embedded itself within the popular consciousness, and even the everyday language we use, more than pretty much any other single work of children’s literature – indeed, even more so than the novel it was a sequel to, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland . If you’ve ever used the words ‘chortle’ or ‘galumph’, or encountered the linguistic term ‘ portmanteau word ’, or the phrase ‘jam tomorrow but never jam today’, or the idea of ‘being through the looking-glass now’, you’re dealing with the legacy of Through the Looking-Glass .

Curiously, one chapter of the novel, featuring a wasp in a wig, remained unpublished until 1990 . Carroll took out this section from the book before its publication, possibly because his illustrator, John Tenniel, couldn’t ‘see [his] way to a picture’ (according to a letter Tenniel wrote to Carroll in June 1870). It was finally published nearly 120 years after the book first appeared. The ‘wasp in a wig’ is thought to be a play on the more usual phrase, ‘having a bee in one’s bonnet’.

As a masterpiece of nonsense literature, it’s perhaps unwise to analyse Through the Looking-Glass too closely in search of deeper meanings and subtexts, although it’s certainly true that aspects of the novel can be made to resonate with Freudian significance (Carroll was writing before Freud, but psychoanalysis encourages us to go back and read classic works of literature with an awareness of the Freudian unconscious and how it operates).

And it’s well-known that Lewis Carroll was fond of Alice Liddell and other young girls (and how innocent, or otherwise, his feelings towards them were has been the subject of analysis and debate ever since).

When Alice finds herself between the White Queen and the Red Queen at the end of Through the Looking-Class , it’s tempting to see this as Carroll’s veiled way of referring to Alice’s passage from childhood into adulthood, with white connoting purity and innocence, and red carrying its well-known connotations of sin, the flesh, and even menstruation.

If the chess metaphor whereby Alice the pawn becomes a queen can be interpreted as representing this passage into adulthood, the fact that both Queens deem Alice unsuitable to be a queen like them: she’s not ready, Carroll is perhaps saying.

Of course, some readers of Through the Looking-Glass may blanch at such a psychoanalytic interpretation of the novel (or at psychoanalytic interpretations of literature in general). But we should bear in mind that the end of the novel suggests that it has been little more than a dream: that the world ‘through the looking-glass’ is nothing more than fantasy and imagination, representing the free play of the childlike mind, but according to the rules of chess.

The chess game offers Carroll the ideal conceit for Alice’s adventures, since Carroll’s writing is governed by an awareness of logic and mathematics (he was a mathematician by trade, at the University of Oxford).

But the way that one adventure leads to the other with some suggestive link joining them – the egg on the shelf turning into Humpty Dumpty, or the King’s horses and King’s men paving the way for the White King – gives the whole book the peculiar logic of dreams, too, where anything might happen, but according to rules of association and suggestion.

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2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass”

The best guide to both the Alice books is Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, which goes into astonishing detail about the possible philosophical and political meanings of the books.

My latest book ” Penny Down the Drain” took its title from the same idea as the Alice books, that of a girl falling into another world but is really a homage to Beverley Nichols. Maybe you could do an analysis of ” The Tree that Sat Down” one day. meanwhile my little offering should be published on December 9th 2020.( only in paperback)

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Book Review On Alices Adventures In Wonderland

Type of paper: Book Review

Topic: Literature , Symbolism , Teenagers , Leadership , Utopia , Youth , Alice In Wonderland , Rabbit

Published: 11/15/2019

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The story “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” is housed together with the story “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” in one book volume. In this case, I shall consider the first story only.

The story “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” was originally published in mid 1860s. It is the story of a young Alice after her dream when she fell asleep. After waking up, Alice relates the story to her sister. The story is about the series of events which take place in Alice’s dream when she fell asleep in the course of her lessons. In the dream, the young Alice was following a white rabbit down towards the rabbit hole. As she continued following the rabbit, she met several strange creatures in the dream, which left her in all manners of curious dilemmas. Alice found herself in a situation where there was a total failure of the application of common sense and the reverse was expected – the nonsensical. The story has no central storyline; however, Alice rapidly jumps from one strange encounter to another before she wakes up and relates to her sister the whole episode.

Carroll has managed to create very unique characters in this book. Alice has been depicted as a very superb heroine that everyone wishes to admire and emulate. Even though Alice meets all sorts of backwards and reverse adventures, there is the dominance of her sensibility and analytical reasoning. She always tries to reason out her way in spite of the prevalent unreasonable situations. For the continuity of the volume, the author created unique characters that the reader cannot forget. Such characters include the White Rabbit, among others. “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” is highly creative. Every animal in the story is talking including the rabbits. The animals talk to such objects as checkerboard pieces and flowers. Even though Alice thinks that this is a mere dream, the things are actually happening. Alice notices a white rabbit that is holding a watch, wearing clothes, in hurry, and talking and so, she decides to follow it. The whole which the white rabbit falls into, leads them to the wonderland – the land where all things are alive and talking. She gets amazed and continues to follow the white rabbit which leads her into the adventure where she meets very strange things. Finally, Alice realizes that she misses home.

As much as the book depicts high levels of creativity, the symbolism is so much exaggerated. The fact that everything talks in the wonderland is too overstated. The colorful image of the wonderland is also overstated. In reality, a rabbit can not possess the qualities shown of the white rabbit.

All through the story, Carroll has depicted a brilliant and excellent use of symbolism and word play. Almost all the symbols have more than one meaning in the story as the story has hidden messages. The story also includes the satires of some rhymes and songs of the times in England. The book can be best loved by young children due to its imaginative inspiration and the unique and extraordinary qualities. Adults can also love the book due to its jokes. The book therefore fits well across all age groups and I recommend it to anybody who would wish to read it. However, the edition should have the original illustrations.

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