Finding Senselessness In Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Through The Looking-Glass

Finding Sense In Senselessness
A senseless world is creatively put together by Lewis Carroll to become a very imaginative plot of entertainment, yet is has yielded a variety of concerns that relate to life throughout the novel. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass relate to a dream-like world that is full of adventures that of which a young girl, Alice, accompanied by various animals, insects, and imaginary characters experience. Carroll has not only created an abstract character group, but has also taken Alice from our ordinary world and put her into a world of playing cards and chess pieces. Through all of the nonsense that is depicted in Alice, an important theme is growing up. The senselessness of Alice 's dream world becomes a contradiction on the ordered ordinary world. Carroll’s work gives many messages to its readers through the formalist perspective; the form of literary works that emphasize to determine its meaning by focusing on literary elements. Alice 's repeated encounters with meaninglessness and senselessness are shown through not only Alice, but through the other characters and the
absurd adventures they go through.
Senselessness seems to be the principal of the story and, the leitmotif of the whole affair. In Alice, all that is known and recognized is shown and revealed by the unprejudiced look of a kid that sheds light on the whole nature that surround her. Everything that appears safe and obvious to us in the senseless world can lose affidability, that the human identity cannot escape from destiny. In fact, Alice changes her stature so many times that she is not able anymore to answer the caterpillar’s question of “Who are you?” (Carroll 37). Continuing in the book, Alice keeps looking at the distorted mirror of a society that is considered civil and evolved; a kind of image that is captivating the senselessness. The many word games during Alice’s trip, for example, show the absolute arbitrariness of one of the fundamental communication tools of our story: the language. With intelligence and sensitivity Carroll shows how much words, in deep, know how to be ambiguous and bearers of misunderstandings even though they are the main form of communication that we know. Alice reflects the real senselessness that rule the world dealing with the extreme arbitrariness of the human laws, society’s rules in force.
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
The Caterpillar has never seen something like Alice before; shes the only one like her around in Wonderland. She finds herself explaining to the Caterpillar about who she is, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”(Carroll 38). Alice responded uncertainly to the Caterpillar that she truly did not know exactly who she is. Alice is curious young girl and because of her age, she still is discovering the world around her. Throughout the novel Alice is growing up and gaining information and clues of the world around her because she starts to unlock reasonings of Wonderland and its odd habits. And even though she is regaining her way through confusion, she still is able to find home by the
end.
Going "down the rabbit hole"; the rabbit hole is the place where it all begins. It 's Alice 's blind decision to follow the White Rabbit into the rabbit hole, it leads to all of her adventures. Alice 's decision is pretty foolhardy; if this weren 't a magical fantasyland, she 'd probably be killed by the fall, and she has no idea where she 's going, what she 's facing, or how to get home. You may also notice that going down the rabbit hole is an unknown adventure that Alice decides to take.
Alice 's Adventures in Wonderland are very absurd and limit breaking. Alice’s adventures are "continually astonishing us with its modernity"(Geer). Alice’s fall through a rabbit hole is Alice finding herself in a senseless and nonsense filled world. Alice finds herself in different situations involving various animals. Carroll describes the fall into the rabbit hole as an escape into literature. The theme with Alice growing and shrinking into different sizes connects well with the escape; it showcases the ups and downs of adolescence as long as the absurd adventures she goes through.
Alice changes size constantly. She is either too large to make it through the little door or, too small to reach the key. Size; it is an obvious connection between size, age, and maturity. Alice is constantly changing in size because growing up and getting older all the time. Carroll wants to show us that growing up is unpredictable and it is seen greatly by Alice’s changes in size. Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll draws our attention to age more than size and process of maturing. Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, that she should of "left off at seven," which shows that the only way to freeze your age is by stopping time.
One other example of maturing is when Alice has a size change. Her feelings are very shaken from her adventures and she often feels hopeless, "Everything is so out-of-the-way down here" Alice repeats to herself every once in a while. The Cheshire Cat has a way of words that explains the deep meaning of wonderland, "Everyone in Wonderland is mad, otherwise they wouldn 't be down here.” Time is also expressed by the words in the novel. The Mad Hatter has his watch set, "it 's always six o 'clock and tea-time". Time matters because everything happens in time; in growing up.
Through all of Alice’s absurd adventures, she is given many life lessons. The senselessness of Alice 's dream world is a strong dream and a contradiction on the ordinary world. Carroll’s work gives its readers the view of Alice by emphasizing adventures and little things to determine its meaning. Alice 's repeated encounters with all of these random characters, The White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter, and The Caterpillar put meaning into senselessness. Alice shows the journey of adolescence through herself and through the other characters. The absurd adventures they go through are a true Wonderland.

Works Cited
Beverly Lyon Clark, "Lewis Carroll 's Alice Books: The Wonder of Wonderland Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children 's Literature, Volume One, edited by Perry Nodelman, pp. 44-52. West Lafayette, Ind.: ChLA Publishers, 1985.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. New York: Grosset&Dunlap, .. Print.
Jennifer Geer, " 'All Sorts of Pitfalls and Surprises ': Competing Views of Idealized Girlhood in Lewis Carroll 's Alice Books." Children 's Literature 31 (2003): 1-24.