Alice in Wonderland Dream Analysis
Dream Analysis of Alice in Wonderland
Who’s who and what’s real; are we who we claim we are, and is reality really real or is everything just a fragment of what we think is the universe?
A dream sequence is a technical term used mostly in film and television to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. (Wikipedia) The deeper lying theme that Carroll wanted to incorporate into his story of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, in my opinion, was not his psychological or sexual desire for Alice Liddell. What he did mean to express by writing these stories was his innermost desire to escape from reality in which a relationship between he and Liddell was not allowed to a fantasy land where everything is backwards and nonsensical, and he did exactly that in the guise of children’s literature. He uses notions of dreams and their significance to real life to symbolize his own dream sequence in his real life: as an interlude from his normal life as many worthy professions to his newly discovered hobby as a photographer of little girls. Carroll first incorporated the notion of dreams and the riddle of life in Alice in Wonderland, where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat for the first time. Upon receiving Alice’s comments about the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat gives her a rather puzzling response, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” (66) The annotation for this quote was interesting to look at, because it explains exactly the dream sequence that Carroll wanted his readers to understand as a part of his life. The annotation basically states that insane things can happen in dreams, and they are perceived as quite real, and therefore, dreams are just as real as the actual reality that one accepts as the standard reality. Then, what is a dream and what differentiates a dream from reality? This is what Carroll wished to convey to his readers about himself; the Wonderland that Alice stumbles into is as real to the author as it is
Who’s who and what’s real; are we who we claim we are, and is reality really real or is everything just a fragment of what we think is the universe?
A dream sequence is a technical term used mostly in film and television to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. (Wikipedia) The deeper lying theme that Carroll wanted to incorporate into his story of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, in my opinion, was not his psychological or sexual desire for Alice Liddell. What he did mean to express by writing these stories was his innermost desire to escape from reality in which a relationship between he and Liddell was not allowed to a fantasy land where everything is backwards and nonsensical, and he did exactly that in the guise of children’s literature. He uses notions of dreams and their significance to real life to symbolize his own dream sequence in his real life: as an interlude from his normal life as many worthy professions to his newly discovered hobby as a photographer of little girls. Carroll first incorporated the notion of dreams and the riddle of life in Alice in Wonderland, where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat for the first time. Upon receiving Alice’s comments about the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat gives her a rather puzzling response, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” (66) The annotation for this quote was interesting to look at, because it explains exactly the dream sequence that Carroll wanted his readers to understand as a part of his life. The annotation basically states that insane things can happen in dreams, and they are perceived as quite real, and therefore, dreams are just as real as the actual reality that one accepts as the standard reality. Then, what is a dream and what differentiates a dream from reality? This is what Carroll wished to convey to his readers about himself; the Wonderland that Alice stumbles into is as real to the author as it is