BOOK REVIEW- Alice In Wonderland

ANANTHU RAJAN(5033)

 

Alice in Wonderland is one of the most famous children’s books ever written. It became a success from the moment it was published, in 1865. Since then, it has been translated in 80 languages, adapted for theatre, television, and today it is one of the most quoted works in English literature.

This book was written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under his pen name: Lewis Carroll. He was a man of many interests including mathematics, logic, astronomy, and philosophy.

Born in 1832, he went to college in Oxford and contributed to various papers by writing and drawing. He then taught mathematics at college while pursuing his work at The Comic Times. Author of several mathematics treaties, he also wrote novels

The text doesn’t really have a thread but is more a series of strange encounters like in a dream.

It is the story of a young girl named Alice. As she is sitting on the riverbank of the Thames, she sees a white rabbit with a waistcoat that is talking to itself, pass by. Alice follows it out of curiosity until she enters a rabbit-hole and starts falling down slowly. When the little girl eventually lands, she is in a room with a table and a key on it. A little door leads into a wonderful garden. But it is so small she can’t go through.

She then notices a small bottle labeled “Drink me” on the table. Alice drinks it and becomes very small. But she forgot to open the door and cannot reach the key. She now eats a cake labeled “eat me” and become very big. As she is confused she cries and then tries to cool herself with the white rabbit’s fan. She soon shrinks so much she is forced to swim in her own tears. She then meets other animals and gets out of the water. The Mouse wants to tell a dry story in order to dry but the Dodo suggests a caucus-race.

When she is dry, Alice enters the garden. She goes to a house and drinks from a bottle, making her grow again. She is so big she cannot get out and all the animals gather to make her leave. They throw pebbles at her, which are in fact pieces of cake. She eats one and shrinks again.

She runs from the house into the wood and meets a huge puppy and later the Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah. The caterpillar tells her that eating one side or the mushroom will make her either shrink or grow.

Then she finds a cottage where a Fish-Footman delivers an invitation from the Queen to play croquet to a Frog-Footman. She enters and meets the Duchess in the kitchen with her baby. A cook is making a soup and is putting a lot of pepper making the air unbearable. The baby is crying so Alice takes it outside where it changes into a piglet. She leaves him and runs into the woods until she comes upon the Cheshire cat, a grinning, but mysterious animal. He doesn’t appear all at once, and his grin is the first thing Alice sees.

Alice goes on until she meets the mad Hatter and the March Hare, who are having a tea party with a sleeping Dormouse. Alice finds them confusing because they ask riddles to which there is no answer and pretend that there is no room for her whereas there is.

Suddenly, she finds herself in the room where she landed. She uses a piece of mushroom to grow there right size and enters the garden where the Queen is having a croquet game with flamingoes for sticks and hedgehogs for holes. Alice is invited to play. The Queen orders anyone who disagrees with her to be beheaded. Alice finishes the game and is the only one not to be sentenced.

The Queens then asks a Gryphon to take Alice to the Mock Turtle in order to hear its story. The Turtle tells Alice about the time when she was at school and learned subjects like ‘reeling, ‘writhing’ or ‘fainting’. Then Alice, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle dance a Lobster Quadrille.

Next they attend a trial, where the King, assisted by the White Rabbit, tries to find who has stolen some tarts. Alice starts growing and tips over the jury box. The Queen asks to sentence the accused now and to hear the verdict later. Alice protests and is sentenced. She replies to her that nobody cares and that they are just a pack of cards. The cards start jumping at her face and that is the moment when she wakes up from her dream.

Alice in Wonderland was written for children. It is a humorous fantasy novel about a child’s dream world with strange people and animals. The language used is simple and the book contains drawings to make it fun to read. The reader sees Wonderland through Alice’s perspective and listens to her inner-monologues. In addition, the book is divided into episodes and stories.

Finally, Alice in Wonderland was written in a very unusual way. The author used “nonsense verses”, a process of treating logic in an ironic way. It was done by playing strange word games with apparently no signification, presenting absurd rhymes, and asking riddles that had no answer. For instance, many of the names of characters are word games (the Cheshire cat, the March Hare…). Moreover Carroll likes to invent neologisms such as ‘uglification’ or ‘muchness’. They create a singular atmosphere in the book.