Literary Analysis Essay on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass

Introduction

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass" are imaginative literature depicting classical artistic style. In the "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Alice the antagonist character, Alice gets attracted and unknowingly follows a rabbit through the magical hole and emerges in the imaginative wonderland with several strange occurrences beyond her cognitive understanding (Jaques & Giddens, 80). She becomes both amazed and perplexed with her new surrounding due to the insignificant importance of the logical laws of scientific application. For instance, in the wonderland, she experiences unique biological changes as her body began to shrink and expand depending on the things she ate or drank. When she shrunk into a minute creature, she cried a pool of the tears that almost drowned her and other creatures. She also encountered animals talking and impersonating humans with a language that made little sense to her. Further, when the rabbit mistakenly sent her to his house for a fan and a pair of gloves, she drunk from unlabelled bottle making her gigantic and unable to move only to regain the normal size after eating small magical cupcakes. Moreover, during her adventure, she meets a hookah-smoking caterpillar and ever-smiling Chersire cat, who directed her to the tea party encompassed with the match hare, the mad hatter and the wonderland queen that has the authority over the kingdom (Carroll, 95). The wonderland queen after noticing the confusion and puzzlement on Alice' face, introduces her to Gryphon that takes her to the mock turtle to be educated on the conventional doctrines of the territory to gain insights and enlightenment on the fundamental survival rules of the wonderland and its diverse magical creatures.

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Additionally, in the "through the looking glass," Alice faces a unique proficiency as she attempts many activities like reading a backward book with the famous poem, the "Jabberwocky." Not only did she stumble upon the Red Queen or the garden of live flowers, but also on the strange insects that look like her toys. She also encounters a white queen, who terrifyingly rush towards her only to turn into a sheep in front of Alice. The apical and magical happenings and context continued to confuse the young girl. For instance, despite reading and re-reading the "Jabberwocky" poem, she understands nothing from the backward book until Humpty Dumpty elaborates the poem for her as the lion and the unicorn battle for their lives (Jaques & Giddens, 99). Furthermore, as she continues to interact with the unique world, an eccentric white knight shows her many worthless inventions in the kingdom before she became the queen of the land. The story depicts the struggles and socio-economic and political battles a queen must undertake to attain the crown. Through the rigorous educational processes full of diverse extreme consequences, Alice must understand and comprehend the fundamental gauge to establish a viable kingdom when she becomes the queen. Nevertheless, after becoming a queen, she orders a feast to celebrate her achievements, but the celebration is shortly dissolved by reality as she wakes up from her slumber.

Lewis Carroll displayed significant allegorical manifestation of the Victorian prejudicial leadership. Despite being considered as children's literature, "Alice's adventure in wonderland" symbolizes the political and tyrannical authority. For instance, the queen of hearts commands the land with extreme dictatorial jurisdiction that she arrests and persecutes any creature that questions her leadership, challenges or dare defeat her in a game. It portrays the extreme power and violence that the aristocrat class used to rule the subjects (Carroll, 165). Due to their dominance in the territory, both the queen and the duchess oppressed their subjects due to no parallel authority to challenge them because of fear of the severe consequences such individual would face. For instance, the queen advocates for the sentencing of culprits before verdicts, a ridiculous process that significantly detains many innocent individuals (Carroll, 160). Carroll was able to expose the rotten British justice system during the Victorian era when the majority of the aristocrats enjoyed and controlled the England territories, and their authority was unchallenged.

Further, Carroll illustrated the place of children and women in society. The themes criticized the social standards and role allocation in the Victorian era as the women were seen as inferior individuals with minor roles of being "angles in the house," domestic, discreet and docile (Jaques & Giddens, 86). However, in both stories, Alice defies the Victorian contemporary socio-cultural dissemination by being vocal, impatient, brave and challenging the authority of the male-dominated aristocratic society. Despite the social stance, she advocates for socio-economic and political change without fear of the ruling class or the adverse consequences her extreme decisions may attract. For instance, when the queen encouraged a "sentence first, then verdict" philosophy, she contradicted the injustice and oppressing leadership, promoting a verdict before any sentence (Carroll, 150).Therefore, irrespective of being in a strange land that marginalized many women, she remained vocal and determined to facilitate institutional changes.

Conclusion

Finally, the educational theme that contradicts the massive emphasis of forcing children to gain pragmatic knowledge indicates the author's belief on the importance of imagination. The Victorian contemporary evangelism and didacticism discouraged creativity and imagination but rather stressing on the acquisition of moral standards through algebraic literature. Carroll portrays that the Victorian society often treated children as miniature adults, severely ignored, chastised and forced to perform, which led to attack on the education system that encourages only book learning education that contains complex theories and principles should be changed or eradicated to allow stimulation of imagination among learners (Carroll, 110). The author ascertains that most of the concepts learned in schoolrooms are often impractical and inapplicable in real life. The book is classic and still loved as it coats sensitive criticism of the society with hilarious and childlike phases allowing readers to think beyond the socio-economic and political constrictions.

Works Cited

Jaques, Zoe, and Eugene Giddens. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass: A Publishing History. Routledge, 2016.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.