The beginning of the story starts when Alice falls asleep and enters a different world where humans are rare to find and talking animals rule the world. She talks to herself most of the time she's there and "fond of pretending to be two people". (p.12) Alice is one curious child and it's understandable that children are curious beings that want to know everything. They are "little scientist" that would experiment what happends around them and try to understand the world that they live in. So to prove that, Alice would soon drink a bottle that is labeled "Drink Me" (p. 10) She curious about what would happen to her but before that she starts thinking logically about what she should do.
Alice later have an episode where she is confused as to who she is and starts comparing herself with others, but later say that " I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh, ever so many lessons to learn!" (p. 16) It goes on and on about trying to know who she is and think that she "changed" somehow. In what way does she change besides the physical? Do you know?
What really surprised me in this story is that the Duchess has a "child" that she seems to just toss about like it was nothing and say to Alice that she could "nurse it a bit" (p. 49) and then leaves to play croquet. So Alice's conscience starts kicking in and thinking that she should save the child, which turned into a pig and set free.
Later on, she meets all type of animals and hears all kinds of storys from them. She angers some of them and then her sister woke her up but she soon find that dreaming up stories about adventures and remembering them makes her childhood more loving.
I didn't have such an adventurous childhood so I wouldn't know what Alice went through but I know that it was better than mine. Sure, I talk to myself most of the time and wanted to be a boy when I was younger but that still didn't give me much of an adventure. What about you guys?
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The story of "Alice in Wonderland," is a true test of the imagination. The story appears to be a dream, in which a young girl is escaping the dullness of reality and replacing it with the excitement of her imagination. By the end of chapter one Alice views common everyday life as "quite dull and stupid."(pg.12)
It seems as though Alice is beginning to change from a child to an adult. There are several references to finding her identity and what it means to grow up. "But then," thought Alice, "shall I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way- to never be an old woman-but then- always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn't like that!" (pg.29). She is questioning what it means to grow up.
I agree with you that the part about the young child being thrown about is very suprising! And also the fact that the young boy turns into a pig....To me it all seems as though Carroll is trying to say that an eventful childhood will be useful to tell stories later on. The story of "Alice in Wonderland," is very eventful indeed.
In reading the Annotated version of Alice in Wonderland, what I found most interesting were all the notes about why Carroll wrote the story the way he did, and why he chose the names he used, and the history behind the story as a whole. He sounds like a very intelligent, amusing person, with an obvious broad imagination.
You mention the violence of throwing the child. There are other examples of violence throughout the book. The Queen of Hearts is always trying to behead her subjects. (Ironic that she is the Queen of HEARTS, then). Martin Gardner makes a wry, subtlely humerous comment on the contemporary critics who think the violence is not appropriate for children: "As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'...should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis." (page 109). This amusing attitude should remind us that children do not read into the violence in the same way as adults do, and a lot of it is probably just viewed as nonsense, not serious. Carroll's Alice is based in nonsense, and it is readily apparant that it should not be taken seriously.
I found reading this section of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" rather tedious. If you're familiar with any child development theories, you might have heard of Vygotsky's theory of "private speech." Private speech is talking aloud to oneself with no intent to communicate with others, which is common in childhood. Alice does this ALL THE TIME. As we've discussed, Alice is "very found of pretending to be two people," which partly explains why Alice talks to herself so much. But I find her self-directed dialog alienating to the reader. I understand that she's somewhat narrating the story, but I felt like it interrupted the flow of the story. I have a pretty high reading comprehension, so I can't imagine a child reading this and being able to fully enjoy it. I'm sure apart of the problem is that this story was written so long ago that there is somewhat of a language difference between then and now.
This story is wildly imaginative, which is why it is appealing to children. I, personally, however, do not enjoy or relate to this type of fantasy. I find it kind of obnoxious and boring how Alice keeps shrinking and growing. When it happened the first time it was amusing, but after that I didn't see why Carroll couldn't have thought up something a little more creative to do to Alice
I did enjoy the other characters (talking animals) and the humor they brought to the story...but then Alice seemed to always piss them off, so that kind of bugged me too.
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