Alice In Wonderland Identity Essay
“Who in the world am i?”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself, you see.” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s famous story of a young girl lost in a land of contradictions, is full of confusing questions and surreal situations. Despite containing a plethora of themes and motifs, Carroll’s most obvious emphasis is on the subject of identity. Carroll’s tale is not only one of a girl seeking to find herself as she grows up, it is one of sexual maturation and role selection.
At the start, Alice is simply a girl. She knows who she is, but mostly through denial of specific personas is she able to describe herself. She reassures herself as we read, “I’m sure I’m not Ada . . . for her hair goes in such long ringlets and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little!” (Carroll 8). Her justifications of self do very little to reassure her though, because only a few sentences later she doubts further if her perception of self is accurate, collapsing into tears, wondering, “Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till …show more content…
However, upon closer inspection, the true theme of the story emerges; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is really the story of a little girl who is departing childhood, lost in the confusing world of adulthood, struggling to find a sexual role to fill. The irony of the story is that to discover who she wants to be, Alice must detach from all that makes sense in her reality and lose herself before finding her true identity. Carroll is enticing his readers to do just the same: challenge their perception of personal identity, free of the limitations that are placed upon them, asking what Alice asked of herself: “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself, you see.” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s famous story of a young girl lost in a land of contradictions, is full of confusing questions and surreal situations. Despite containing a plethora of themes and motifs, Carroll’s most obvious emphasis is on the subject of identity. Carroll’s tale is not only one of a girl seeking to find herself as she grows up, it is one of sexual maturation and role selection.
At the start, Alice is simply a girl. She knows who she is, but mostly through denial of specific personas is she able to describe herself. She reassures herself as we read, “I’m sure I’m not Ada . . . for her hair goes in such long ringlets and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little!” (Carroll 8). Her justifications of self do very little to reassure her though, because only a few sentences later she doubts further if her perception of self is accurate, collapsing into tears, wondering, “Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till …show more content…
However, upon closer inspection, the true theme of the story emerges; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is really the story of a little girl who is departing childhood, lost in the confusing world of adulthood, struggling to find a sexual role to fill. The irony of the story is that to discover who she wants to be, Alice must detach from all that makes sense in her reality and lose herself before finding her true identity. Carroll is enticing his readers to do just the same: challenge their perception of personal identity, free of the limitations that are placed upon them, asking what Alice asked of herself: “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great