Monday 16 December 2013

Reality in Alice in Wonderland


During the read of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll performs many interesting acts. The mere purpose of his language seems to bemuse and befuddle the reader due to his constant habit of manipulating words and expressions until their meaning is completely misleading. For comedic purposes only, Carrol twisted words and used them as a visual aid to show that nothing is ever as it seems in Wonderland. The use of this method came in handy for words like not, knot, tale and tail, these signified the subjectivity in Wonderland. The argument of reality comes into the picture with the simple existence of Wonderland. Though Wonderland symbolizes many aspects of real life, its alluring and beguiling beauty fails to be seen in the real world. Even though Wonderland mimics the real world perfectly, it's absurdities are logically impossible. We can imagine, we can recreate, but, we can never really know the thinking process behind Wonderland. Even though Alice in Wonderland is a very confusing and mind boggling story, it still has a moral, or does it?

The true meaning of Alice in wonderland can be perceived to be about drug intake or just a simple story about coming of age. But, it is all false, the meaning is not what other people say it to be, this is because we will never know what happened in the mind of Lewis Carroll. We can make inferences, but, we will never know which one is right. Coming back to my original point, the meaning of Alice in Wonderland is not what other people tell you it is, it is what you think it is. The meaning of Alice in Wonderland is subjective, everyone takes something different out of reading the book.

No comments:

Post a Comment