Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Analysis

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Analytical Essay

Any story of literary merit must have some sort of lasting appeal that allows it to ascend the generations and appeal to a wide variety of cultures, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a fine example. It was undoubtedly both a popular and significant tale when it was first orally told and then written down, and is surely one that is applicable to modern society. Throughout the story, I noticed three main themes that Lewis Carroll appears to have emphasized – the tragic and inevitable loss of innocence, the depiction of life as a meaningless puzzle, and the unveiling of death as a constant and underlying menace. Rather than being a tale of a fantastical drug-induced hallucination, I found Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to be a complex and detailed foray into the deeper meanings of life. Overall, I feel that Alice is certainly a story of value and definitely a much deeper tale than meets the eye. With Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I feel that Lewis Carroll wanted to describe the rise of maturity and the fall of childhood innocence. Throughout the course of the story, Alice goes through a variety of absurd and intense physical changes. 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, anger, and remorse as she goes through them, struggling to maintain a comfortable size. At first, she becomes upset as she keeps finding herself too big or too small to enter the garden. Later on, she also loses control over specific body parts when her neck grows to an absurd length. These constant fluctuations represent the way a child may feel as her body grows and changes during puberty. Symbolically, the garden may represent the Garden of Eden, an optimal expanse of beauty and innocence that Alice is not yet permitted to access, due to her childish innocence. On a different and