Inventive World Of Wonderland And Alice's Journey example essay topic

The inventive world of Wonderland and Alice's journey in to her own imagination is more then merely a children's story. Looking deep at the symbols and structure of the story one can see that it becomes more complex and abstract as Alice gets deeper and deeper in her journey in Wonderland. Lewis Carol wrote the book in 1876 and Disney produced its own animated version of Alice in Wonderland no more then twenty years ago. The Disney production aimed at a younger audience, shows Wonderland as a very colourful and vibrant place, full of flowers, trees and a majestic garden of wonder and glory.

Although Disney is successful at doing that, it fails in showing the hidden aspects of the story, the aspects of the novel that need to be dug into to comprehend. This is most likely because it was aimed a younger audience. The symbolism that is used helps to create a deeper understanding of the true meaning of the story. When just watching or reading the story one may think that from the looks of it, the story about Alice falling through a rabbit-hole and finding herself in a silly and nonsense world, is fairly guileless as a tale. The underlying story, the one about a girl maturing away from home in what seems to be a world ruled by chaos and nonsense, is quite a frightening one. All the time, Alice finds herself confronted in different situations involving various different and curious animals being all alone.

She hasn't got any help at all from home or the world outside of Wonderland. This represents a theme of abandonment. The main theme of the story is Alice's identity crisis and her journey to find her identity. This young girl's journey is symbolic of universal growth and self-discovery. As Alice learns a great deal about herself with each new encounter in Wonderland, she begins to realize that these experiences weaken and even distort her previously stable self-image. Accepted norms now seem foreign to Alice, and in many ways she becomes an outcast.

In one situation where Alice discovers this, is when she is confronted by the caterpillar, who is one character who cannot accept Alice's lack of self awareness, or at least what he considers self-awareness to indicate. When he asks Alice to divulge her identity, Alice cannot respond with confidence and suffers the caterpillar's reprimand. Alice explains her predicament by saying, "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". Alice can only explain her current state of existence; how and why she grows or shrinks seem impossible to explain. Alice here reflects a characteristic irony: Trying to clarify one's identity or explain oneself generates confusion, and significantly creates a more disorganized world view.

The author, Lewis Carol, also effectively used characters as symbols in his story. One of the most obvious is the character "Alice" herself. Alice is more than a Victorian girl. She symbolizes a dreamer, an ambitious hero, and an ever-growing young queen. Alice as a child undergoes the mythological experiences of abandonment, and invincibility. Alice is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end.

The author also uses the setting as a symbol in this story. Wonderland, which exists only in the mind of Alice and her imagination, can be analyzed in the novel as having many different characteristics. It holds a much deeper meaning in the novel then it does in the movie. A part of Wonderland is laid out like a chessboard or a geometric grid and Alice in fact plays chess at one point of the novel. In the film both those aspects are left out, the film doesn't seem to make any note of the abstract or mathematical features of Wonderland yet instead portrays it as a glorious and colourful world. It does a good job of showing the vibrant colours and atmosphere with many flowers, tree's, clear blue sky, and with a very cartoon like, unrealistic look to it that appeals to most children for which the film was aimed to.

However because of its inability to show the deeper side of Wonderland, the one that dealt more with mathematical and abstract concepts rather then color and nature, the film wasn't able to bring out the setting as well as the novel. Alice, merely seven and a half, initially encounters the problem of money in Wonderland when she boards the train. This problem proves to be very symbolic. She is scolded and ridiculed for having no ticket.

Yet where she came from, no ticket was made available. The conductor should not hold her responsible. She is inherently disadvantaged like those born into poverty. I think this proves that Alice's imaginary world, with all its madness, symbolizes the bewildering, unfriendly and materialistic adult world into which young children are prematurely thrown. Kids like Alice often realize that "money makes the world go round", at an unnaturally early age. Alice also encounters many different and strange characters in Wonderland, most of which are personified characters such as the White Rabbit, or the Caterpillar, and some who are deranged humans as is the case with the Mad Hatter.

The film by Disney was able to capture the physical characteristics of most characters like the White Rabbit and Caterpillar, but it didn't well describe the Mad Hatter like he was supposed to be portrayed. It is true that the novel shows the Mad Hatter to be a very silly and illogical character. But in either case the hatter still is somewhat a symbol of a joker. He talks about having a happy non-birthday instead of a happy birthday and reversing the meaning of many ideas and words. At one point during the tea party the Mad Hatter presents to her an illogical argument stating: "Take some more tea", said the Mad Hatter said to Alice very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet, so I can't take more."You mean you can't take less, it's very easy to take more then nothing".

That part, which was not in the film, showed how the Mad Hatter is able to turn almost any situation into a riddle. But the novel also gave him an intellectual dimension, which wasn't in the movie. The movie just doesn't seem to give the Mad Hatter as big of a role as one would hope for after reading the book. We only see the Mad Hatter as a frenzy lunatic who can't stop talking in the movie, but the book shows him on several occasions as calm and relaxed talking to Alice about interesting concepts. That part of the book, where Alice steps through the looking glass and into the world of the reversed was entirely left out and because of that the movie suffers. The films weakest point comes when analyzing carefully the novel and looking for hidden messages or symbols which aren't meant to catch the readers attention without looking deep into the story.

Examples of this is the symbol of a looking glass which is basically a mirror that Alice steps into to enter Wonderland. The mirror symbolized the reverse reality, the reality that exists in her own mind and how it is the complete opposite of the real world, just like a mirror is the opposite of the real world. The Red Queen explains to Alice at one point: "What sort of things to do you remember best?" asked Alice. "Oh, things that happened the week after next".

The Queen replied. The film doesn't even touch on that aspect of the novel. Also, the novel made a reference to the theory of evolution at the end when Alice is running away from Queen and towards the door to reality. As Alice runs she becomes taller more fit, and looking at the illustration included in the novel it is almost like that of Darwin's diagram showing how man evolved from an ape.

Relativity also plays a part in the novel when the Red Queen tells Alice, "You may call it nonsense if you like, but I've heard nonsense compared in which that would be as sensible as a dictionary". The film did not show any of those two aspects of Wonderland nor did it show many other situations that seemed to present itself as an illogical argument. The novel is truly interesting, including many ideas and concepts that need to be read into to understand. The film left out these ideas in order to focus it more to children, and by doing that it missed out on the whole other side of Alice of Wonderland.

The film and novel, both which deal with the mind of a young and curious girl, bring out different aspects of youth and imagination. The novel deals more with abstract concepts such as evolution, reality, and dreams, where the film deals more with Alice's quest to return home and adventure into the paranormal world of her own imagination. Both of those issues when combined are what Alice and Wonderland is meant to be all about. Because the novel deals more with abstract ideas, symbols, and themes with a deeper meaning, it would appeal more to an older audience although many younger readers can still enjoy it, whereas the film dealing with adventure appeals mainly to a younger audience.