As Alice traverses further into wonderland, she becomes immersed in the oddity of its ways. It seems on an unconscious level, Alice is already disconnecting to the reality of her other world. It is not to say what Alice is experiencing currently is not real, for what boundaries do we have to compare ‘reality’ to? In this sense, the identity of Alice is being examined through her words: ‘Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!” Alice already determines she is not Ada, but still questions whether or not she could be Mabel. If Alice is not Ada, but Mabel, then where was ‘Alice’ to begin with in the first place? The defining lines of Alice’s reality are slowly blending into the place before her.
It may also be that Alice is free to take on the identity of anyone in this new land. Alice exclaims, “If I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else’.” As Alice unconsciously puts on the Rabbit’s white gloves, she claims a narrow escape from shrinking away altogether. At this point the disappearance of her own identity seems challenged, relating once more, to her gradual shift in becoming an integral part of her surroundings.
From another point of view, there are a number of curiously ironic connections to the world before the rabbit hole. The mouse Alice finds swimming along in her pool of tears, can speak French! How amusing to find that in a foreign place, there is a familiarity in language and communication. Even more peculiar is the fact that there are cats, dogs, and mice in this new dimension. If the existence of familiarized animals is present, then there may not be a complete separation between the two worlds. Perhaps Alice had stumbled upon an alternate reality similarly connected to the one she had known. Could the world Alice had left be connected to the one she currently resides in? Or are they just two separate dimensions from which the only link is the rabbit hole?
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What a truly fantastic pair of lines:
Great language-play and premise alike!
This is an interesting look into the reality of Wonderland. While some assume she is simply dreaming and therefore there are no rules that apply. This analysis gives a new dimension to the whimsical world Carroll has created. For if this story had like a dreamscape, no laws or sense of order and familiarity, then Alice might have become a trivial fairy tail such as Dr. Seuss. Not to say there is anything so wrong with the books, but one can truly say with conviction that they are singularly a children’s series while Alice hold’s meaning for many adults today. I feel it is the fact that while Wonderland seems wholly inconsistent with anything we can imagine it is truly only a twist on our own reality with familiar themes and topics popping up at every unexpected turn.