Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland /
Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll
These
two children books tell of a journey through a fantasy world. Alice (Liddel)
is travelling into an oniric and symbolic land. Dozing
off, Alice dreams she follows a white rabbit into a rabbit hole.
Related reviews Momo
The neverending story
Related essays Children's
literature
The
characters she meets, from the white rabbit or the Dormouse, the Queen
of Spades, all have a meaning which refers to parables, metaphors, and
psychological interpretation (that I will not cover here).
The characters like the Mad Hatter and the Morse and the Carpenter, are
all mad, but not as worrying as the Cheshire Cat and TeedleDum and TeedleDee,
the crazy twins.
Except for the Jabberwocky, nothing is frightening in this story, and
as the magical world is reduced to nothing when she wakes up, these two
stories are not part of the Gothic Tales, but of the fairy tale category.
The pace of the book is set by poems, riddles, games, and small tales
within the tale (like the Jabberwocky), which would of course break the
pace of a proper gothic tale.
After this
first success, Lewis Carroll wrote a second book, which also proved very
popular: "Through the Looking Glass". Both children and grown-ups
will enjoy them (although grown-ups more, in these pokemon days).
Alice was adapted very nicely by Walt Disney, and more recently as a video
game (American McGee's Alice, by Electronic Arts).
Nowadays, Alice suffers a lot from Lewis Carroll, who was inclined to taking
photographies of his young friends, which today would certainly be unacceptable
as some of these photos include childrens' nudes, although it seems that
he did not do anything improper, probably because his religious background
held him back.
This site is a member
of WebRing.
To browse visit
Here.
