Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Theme Analysis
Alice in Wonderland is a coming of age story. It is the growth of Alice from an
undisciplined child to a wise young woman. The principle arrangement of this growth
is two-parted. First Alice must learn that rules are essential to civil, adult life. Then
she must learn that if rules are adhered to blindly, and without a merciful sense of
justice, then society becomes worse than childish anarchy, it becomes a tyranny.
These truths are played out in the metaphors of children's games and rhymes.
Dream
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alice’s dream, so that the characters
and phenomena of the real world mix with elements of Alice’s unconscious state. The
dream motif explains the abundance of nonsensical events in the story.
Symbol Analysis
Alice: Alice was a very important figure. As a symbol, “she is more than a Victorian
girl…she is the symbol of the Victorian world, and of the Victorian attitude towards
children.” (What Was Found There) Feeling constantly awkward and perhaps isolated
in his society
“Going down the rabbit hole” is a way of describing a conscious awakening. It is the
sense of suddenly realizing that the world around you is not at all how you thought it
was and the things that you have been told are lies.
The White Rabbit: It is he who leads Alice down the rabbit hole, it is he who woke
her up from her daze since the hot day had mad her sleepy. In the both pagan and
Christian tradition, the rabbit is associated with the rebirth and re-awakening of the
Christ (a high level of consciousness). By following him and his orders (even when
he's wrong, mistaking her for his housemaid!), Alice finds her way into many
adventures -- including growing into a giant inside the Rabbit's own house! But
usually Alice and the Rabbit are not really making contact with each other: she
follows him and he doesn't see her, she's in his house and he's outside, she's in the trial
audience and he's acting as a court officer. White Rabbit is a nervous, twitchy kind of
person -- not surprising, given what kind of animal he is. Timid around important
people (such as the Queen or the Duchess), he nonetheless seems to enjoy lording his
power over people who rank lower than him (such as Alice, when he mistakes her for
his housemaid Mary Anne). With his fanatical attention to clothes and punctuality, and
his appearance of doing minor jobs for important people (like following the Queen at
her croquet party, or being the Herald at the Knave's trial), he is probably meant to
represent a specific British type, awed by powerful people and always trying to look
good in front of his superiors.
Food: Food is the used in this novel as a metaphor for growth. Carroll is literalizing
the old notion that food helps you grow big and strong, that food is the path to
adulthood. Ironically, Carroll is also pointing out that growing up is only half the way
to adulthood. Alice can control her size and therefore her position as an adult with the
food provided by the Caterpillar, but it isn't until the Cheshire Cat shows her the
dangers of adulthood that she is able to be truly adult. Food can make you big in
Wonderland (as in life) but only mercy and experience can make you wise.
Size change
Alice's size changes imply the growth into adulthood. Throughout the course of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes through a variety of absurd physical
changes. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice changes size constantly. When
she first arrives in Wonderland, she's too large to make it through the little door into
the beautiful garden; after she drinks from the mysterious bottle, she's too small to
reach the key. Once she eats the special cake, she's enormous, but the White Rabbit's
fan makes her small again. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts
as a symbol for the changes that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be
traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration, and sadness when she goes through them.
The Garden
The garden may symbolize the Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and
innocence that Alice is not permitted to access. On a more abstract level, the garden
may simply represent the experience of desire, in that Alice focuses her energy and
emotion on trying to attain it. The two symbolic meanings work together to
underscore Alice’s desire to hold onto her feelings of childlike innocence that she
must relinquish as she matures.
The Caterpillar
The Caterpillar is notably slow and unhurried in thinking and talking. The Caterpillar
is a good example of the frustrating way in which the Wonderland creatures treat
Alice -- asking her questions which make no sense, and not paying attention to her
answers. (For this reason, many readers have come to believe Wonderland is meant to
make us remember what the world of grown-ups seems like from the perspective of a
child!)
The Tea-party
The tea-party in the Victorian age (when 'Alice in Wonderland' was written) was a
function in which social norms and cultural rules were of the highest importance. It
was of particular importance to the higher classes. Despite all the rules normally
associated at a tea party and the pleasant socializing also associated with it, the tea
party is nothing but a function of chaos in 'Alice in Wonderland'! There are no rules
here, and everyone present at the tea party is completely insane. The Mad-Tea party
can be taken as a parallel to society. Society is one mad collection of social norms
which we abuse and use to our own advantage.
Mad Hatter
The Mad Hatter challenges Alice's intelligence with an unfamiliar logic that only
makes sense within the context of Wonderland. The Mad Hatter is a hatter -- a man
who makes hats. In nineteenth-century England, the phrase "mad as a hatter" was
common because hatters really did often go crazy.
The Cheshire Cat: The cat is a symbol of deep perception, because cats always appear
to be able to see beyond this world. The cat seems to have an outsider's perspective on
Wonderland in a way that no one else, except Alice, does. The crazy behavior of the
Wonderland people baffles Alice, who is always trying to figure out why they do what
they do; but the Cat understands that Wonderland operates on dream-logic, and that its
people's actions don't make any sense. As it explains calmly to Alice in Chapter 6,
"We're all mad here. You're mad. I'm mad."
The King and Queen of Hearts
The Queen of Hearts is clearly the ruling power in Wonderland.The king and Queen
of Hearts seem to be a straightforward parody of the monarchy.
Their followers are made to do the silliest and most degrading acts, and these
followers only do so because have been instilled with fear.