Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland was my favorite film when I was younger, so naturally I chose this book to read for the Classic Text assignment. It was to my great surprise that the book was not compliant with the Disney film at all. Though there certainly were basic and also specific elements which appeared in both the film and the book, I was shocked to find how drastically Disney changed the story. I was in fact quite irritated with the Alice in the book, while this has never happened with the film. I think the ‘Book-Alice’ is quite a bratty, know-it-all who quite easily begins to doubt her whole being, just because she changes in height a few times. I also think she interrupts the other characters quite often, to ask them questions about the most trivial things.

What I loved about the book was the absolute absurdness and the creativity. The writing style made it very easy to paint a picture is my head, which is something I can certainly appreciate in a book. I am also quite fond of the whole imaginary world kind of stories, because you can just let your imagination run wild with those stories.  In the end I found it quite a disappointment when I read about all of the sounds that actually where the sounds of things in the real world (the cow-bells, etc.). For me, this kind of burst the bubble of the unique imaginative world.

When I didn’t like about the book was the fact that Alice was kind of a passive heroine. She didn’t take any real action, she just went along with everything that happened to her. Though this could be the effect of being completely overwhelmed, it did not seem like she was overwhelmed at all. Whatever was presented to her, she just went along with it no matter how silly it was. The Duchess’ baby who slowly changed into in pig, the soldiers that were actually a deck of cards, a Cheshire cat which can pop in and out at any given time at any given place, etcetera.

When I thought of patterns in the book, I instantly thought of the shrinking and growing, but also of the rabbit. I think the rabbit is supposed to be a symbolic creature, for he is always late and time is running out. I struck to me that this might be a reference to Alice’s childhood. Maybe time was running out for her too, and the rabbit was a reminder that she had to grow up. This is connected to the other pattern, the shrinking and growing. She is growing up, but maybe she does not want to. This would explain the constant changes in her size, despite it being an entertaining obstacle in the story. This theory only started to form when I was forced to think of the book in a literary way, not just an entertaining one. Actually, it happened when I started writing this blog…

What puzzles me about the book is the ending. It was all a dream, another thing I do NOT like about this book, but at the end the older sister has the exact same dream Alice had. I do not quite understand why the author wanted to put this element in there, because it seems way to much of a stretch (even though the whole book is basically a stretch).

All in all, I quite enjoyed this book, even though it had its ups and downs. Alice in Wonderland will always be one of my favorite stories, but this book has changed my outlook on the film.

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After discussing this book in class I noticed I have made a slight mistake while reading. The ending of the book is not as confusing as I thought, because it appeared that Alice told her sister about her dream in Wonderland and this story triggered her sister to dream about this world too. This clarified a lot for me!

We also determined that, though most of the students thought Alice was in fact a bratty child, she was exactly that: A child. So we mustn’t look at her decisions and realizations as an adult, because when she was not capable of those kind of rationality.

When I heard the writer of this book was quite a bit too friendly towards little kids, I was appalled. The story lost its touch to me, and I think I can never read this book without judgment anymore.

We also discussed Peter Pan, the Secret Garden and The wizard of Oz, which are similar stories. The stories are similar, because they are all obviously children’s novels. There are a few characteristics that show this. For one, in all of the books the main character is traveling somewhere where there are no parents. They are free to do whatever they like, and growing up in the process. They learn they have responsibilities and start acting accordingly. All of these books have a very straightforward plot. There is no subtext hidden in the books, because that would be too difficult to figure out for young children. The scene in all of these books is an imaginary place. This means that the children reading it can let their imagination run wild, which is something they do in that age.