Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland remains one of the most bizarre yet oddly complex
novels even 150 years after its publication and despite the inevitable
confusion and suspension of belief, it is one of the true classics. The
children’s book has entertained all ages since its publication and so much of
its appeal lies in Wonderland itself where the bizarrely beautiful world
captures the imagination with grinning cats, mad tea parties and a host of
anthropomorphic animals. This world at the bottom of a rabbit hole provides a
direct contrast to our world, the world of Alice and the reader, where cats do
not grin, tea parties are civilised and animals are strictly animals.
Ultimately, Wonderland is a setting where reason and logic are irrelevant and
this is the factor which has captivated me and made this one of my favourite
novels as similar to Alice, I approached Wonderland with the perspective
imposed by the over world that everything must have a reason and ambiguity is a
challenge; something to be conquered. In a particular episode in which a baby
metamorphoses into a pig, the logic and reality is removed and Wonderland
therefore mocks the world of logic, the world I was trying to impress, and instead
praised the imagination. Following this discovery, I was able to more
thoroughly enjoy the novel without trying to ‘work it out’. Reading should be
for personal enjoyment and Carroll encapsulates this realisation. I suggest to
first-time readers and also re-readers to suspend logic and use Wonderland as escapism
from our world into one where real story-telling lives. So much of the novel is
iconic, namely its characters, but it is the reading and encountering of these
characters, including the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts,
with such bold and iconic personalities which makes the novel so unique. However,
much of the personas of these characters, and certainly their humour, are not
as evident in film adaptations and the true characters remain in the book. The
true pleasure of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland remains on paper and in the imagination. Carroll’s use of
illustrations, simplistic language and episodic chapters make it easy to return
to Wonderland and after the first reading, many, if not all, readers will soon
find themselves tumbling down the rabbit hole again.
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