Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865) - Reality x Dream

Extract

[...] He, for example, advises his readers about true life's maxims claiming, for example, that "If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does." (Alice in Wonderland ch.6). As we analyzed, the complicated interactions between imaginary and reality in Lewis Carroll's novel pretend to depict a full-fantasy world, disconnected from any reality, while, on the contrary, it fully deals with the real world, its perceptions, acceptations and convictions. In an English undoubted Golden Age, made of power and certitudes, by using a subtle double-meaning language, Carroll puts down and cuts the comfortable feeling of a defined and meaningful world, which is yet, quite frightening indeed. [...]

[...] By falling into a rabbit's hole, Alice starts a fantastic journey into an incredible and nonsensical world. It is revealed by the discussions she has then with the animals, which all can speak. The many short interactions in the novel's narrative highlight the apparent foolish rules of a non-existing world and create a real disruption with any element of reality. The March Hare, for example, offered the girl to "Take some more tea," while she replies -offended- "I've had nothing "so I can't take more." (Alice in Wonderland ch.4). [...]

[...] Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865) - Reality x Dream Alice's adventures in Wonderland Dream and reality Popular culture is full of fairy tales which have for long fed people's inner desires and needs for imaginary and extended worlds. Fantasy has even become a more and more demanded literary style recently. This way, Alice's adventures in Wonderland from Charles Lutwige Lodgson, presented as Lewis Carroll, and edited in 1865, perfectly embodies this inextricable link between dream and reality while depicting the adventures of a little girl who found out a lot about a complete imaginary world. [...]

[...] In addition, the novel offers to deal with this world's contradictions, playing out of logic as when the rabbit claims, "My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that." (Alice in Wonderland ch.3). This particularly focuses on the logic's trap as when the Cat asks her "Where are you going? And Alice asks him for directions with "Which way should I go? The animal then replies that it "depends on where (she is) going" (Alice in Wonderland ch.4). [...]

[...] However, imaginary meets reality sometimes and even commutes into some reality parts. This way, the allusion to madness through symbolic elements like the Hatter's hat offers some composition with the existing real world. By alluding to some true facts in an inappropriate or unusual context, the author opts for a confusing mix of imaginary and reality in order to purposely cancel the existing borders between these two worlds. He there unbuilds and questions our representations and certainties bringing them into another light. [...]