Lewis Carroll's Adventures in Wonderland offers a physical departure from reality by creating a fantasy world and adventure in the mind of a young girl. In this separation, Carroll is able to bend the rules of the temporal world. Although this is evident in Alice's physical transfigurations, language and conventions provide additional means to test whether a world can defy the rules that are taught didactically to children and become second nature to adults. This is perhaps an inevitable outcome given that Carroll was raised in a world that operates according to a set of structured rules, but the "wonderful dream" seems to be particularly similar to the "boring reality" to which Carroll tries to escape (98). Fantasies seem to be forever limited by what reality allows the mind to imagine. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The opening scene provides a possible metaphor for Carroll's artistic effort in the face of these constraints: Alice opened the door and found that it led to a small passage, not much larger than a hole to rats: she knelt down and looked down the passage towards the most beautiful garden anyone had ever seen. How she wanted to get out of the dark room and take a walk among these bright flower beds and cool fountains, but she could not stick her head through the doorway (10). Alice seems quite capable of seeing that a more beautiful world exists beyond the confines of her environment. By distinguishing that it is its head, the physical location of the mind, that prevents it from moving forward, Carroll suggests that the mind provides the barrier to entry into lands of pure beauty, similar to the Eden. Alice's subsequent struggle to physically transform and squeeze within these confines reflects Carroll's efforts to access the limitless imagination. Adult consciousness becomes comparable to the “rat hole” in which Alice finds herself trapped. By anchoring the story in the eyes and imagination of Alice, who is just beginning to be taught lessons, and removing her physically from the temporal world, Carroll adjusts the conditions of his adult world to explore whether childhood presents the only opportunity or "key" to access the imagination. Yet, even if he changes the parameters of the world and the viewer's gaze, his enterprise seems doomed to failure; When Alice finally locates the garden , she discovers that her conception of perfection is tainted As the gardeners paint the red rose bush white, Carroll's vision of beauty becomes subject to the same forces that dominate reality Alice's youth creates the possibility of seeing. an alternate world seen through eyes that are not completely corrupted by the social conventions of reality, but its efforts to retain Victorian manners while its new surroundings create no pressure to do so, suggests how the rules of the world are deeply imprinted on the mind during childhood. Alice's language is imbued with the artificiality of her world. His stilted words: “Thou shalt not be beheaded” reflect that the formation of his schooling is not even abandoned in a moment of apparent crisis (65). In many cases, Alice even tries to transfer her concept of good manners to this new environment. She finds it “decidedly uncivil” that the footman looks at the sky the entire time he speaks (46). She seems almost ready to forgive his rudeness if only he could answer her question: “But what should I do?” (46). Alice's rejection of the response fromfootman "Whatever You Want" represents Alice's willingness to trade one set of behaviors for another on the condition that she is told how to behave and act, indicating that these are not the actual ways which she appreciates but the freedom to decide what to do (46). It is at this moment that Alice seems to reject the opportunity for the freedom of the imagination and opt instead for the safer limits created by the dictates of reality. Although Carroll succeeds in changing the content of Alice's new education, her systematic attempt to remember her schooling further indicates that her mind has become so conditioned to being told how to act and react to situations, that she is incapable to escape from this trap, even when the possibility presents itself. Right after Alice remembers: "When I read fairy tales, I thought this kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of a fairy tale! A book should be written about me ", she realizes that "there is no more room to grow here" and concludes that this means there will always be "lessons to learn" (29). The shift of Alice's thoughts from fantasy stories directly to lessons and books suggests that her imagination is never able to escape the confines of instruction; she believes that as a child, it is her duty to care about school (29). She even imposes lessons on herself by “folding her hands on her knees as if she were saying lessons and starting to repeat them”. (16). Perhaps Alice will reach adult status when she has been so conditioned that the mantras of educational systems become immediate responses. It is almost as if, by projecting his conception of an absurd world, the child, simply by being the product of what Carroll despises, namely a world of socially constructed regulations, constitutes an obstacle to the escape of the reality. own imagination to escape reality. He creates a mocking parody of Alice's lessons of reality in the False Turtle's informative speech on Wonderland teaching materials, but is never able to transcend the idea that a world must be ruled by the 'instruction. Carroll's new world might study "shaking and twisting" or "arithmetic-ambition, distraction, indignation and derision", instead of traditional subjects, but the inhabitants of Wonderland are still trapped through the rote process that removes free thought from the educational experience. (76). The rules, like the teachings, are certainly different in this imaginary place, but to be replaced by a whole set of new ones. The game of croquet illustrates how Carroll can only create an alternative reality by constructing a world based on oppositions to the one in which he lives. For example, in normal croquet there are distinct rules, whereas in Wonderland "they don't seem to have any particular rules: at least, if there are, no one takes care of them" (67 ). The new rules are about disobeying the old ones. Perhaps fantasy can never escape man's tendency to use his own experience as a starting point for effecting change. In this case, an author's imagination as well as that of his characters will be forever anchored in reality. In order to examine what a world without rules looks like, we must first understand what a world with rules looks like. Alice's preoccupation with rules materializes in her comment "it's not a regular rule: you [the king] invented it just now" (93). So even though Carroll changes the rules, Alice remains trapped in his desire to define them, creating an additional obstacle to exploring how a lawless country works. Allthe characters Alice encounters simply seem to be stand-ins for the adults Alice encounters. in reality, and it is these characters who serve as teachers of these new lessons and rules. The characters continually change the rules and use language as a weapon that Alice seems to be constantly trying to understand. The Duchess is contradictory, condescending and desperately educational. As the mock turtle stands on the edge of a rock to tell his story while Alice sits in front of him, the environment mirrors that of Alice's classroom in which a teacher positions himself at the front to deliver the lesson. Tuttle even adopts a schoolmaster's tone when he tells Alice, "Really, you're very boring." (75). Leach suggests that “[t]hese behaves towards her as adults behave towards a child: they are peremptory and condescending” (Leach 92). In creating these characters, Carroll is unable to escape the idea that children need instruction and need adult figures to enforce the rules. traditional educational system using Wonderland to parody its flaws, suggesting that even in his mind he finds the problems of imagination and reality inseparable. The sardonic tone that accompanies Alice's observation about the inhabitants and customs of Wonderland reflects that Carroll is all too aware that his dreamland is only a distorted version of reality. Peter Coveney suggests that “the dream takes on a quality of horror because Carroll “is painfully awake in his own dream” (Coveney 334). Although Carroll attempts to hide his dissatisfaction with reality beneath Alice's innocence, he almost seems to test Alice's awareness of her suffering: It was all very well to say "drink me," but the wise little Alice wasn't going to do this in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and see if it's marked 'poison' or not"; for she had read several pleasant little stories about children who had been burned and eaten by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they did not remember the simple rules which their friends had taught them: for for example, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that if you drink a lot from a bottle marked "poison," he is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. (11). The insinuation of both suicide and self-inflicted pain seems an incongruous thought for a seven-year-old; Alice becomes a vehicle through which Carroll reveals his preoccupation with such tortuous thoughts. As Alice begins to drink from the bottle mysteriously labeled “drink me,” Carroll plays with a distorted version of a suicide attempt (11). He is able to conceal his attempt in Alice's innocence, revealed in her childish memories of poisoning, which leaves her unaware of the serious consequences of a bottle that may contain poison. It seems quite morbid that Carroll would choose to place Alice in a situation that would cause her to even contemplate such violent images. Rackin suggests that Carroll's particular genius "depends heavily on his uncanny ability to enter fully into the mind of childhood, to become the dreaming child of our adult dreams" (Rackin 113). Although Alice does not fully understand the suggestions that Carroll plants in her head, the author seems fully aware of the consequences of the poisoning. While the incident with the mysterious bottle marks Alice's initiation into Wonderland, Carroll's decision to culminate his Wonderland story in a The Roomcourtroom creates a suitable environment for his latest attempt to use youthful imagination to escape reality. The story even admits that "very few girls her [Alice's] age knew the meaning of it all", and by placing Alice at the pinnacle of world law, it implies that she did too, even in her imagination , is responsible for the rules of life. reality (86). The courtroom scene seems more like a trial of the imagination than an investigation into the identity of the tart thief. The Queen's directive, "Sentence first, verdict later" (96), reveals Carroll's own feelings of entrapment. He was condemned to grow old and live according to the rules of society only to recognize that the verdict was always against the imagination; his construction of “things and absurdities” seems to be prevented by societal conditioning against imagination (97). It seems strange that Alice wakes up declaring this a "wonderful dream", when just moments earlier she is overcome with anger at the injustice of the tyrannical court of the Queen and King, potentially creating a serious indictment of the reality to which she wakes up. A second possibility is that it is Carroll's voice that utters the word "wonderful", wishing, just like Alice, to be able to respond to the dictates of society, "Shut up! » - “I won't” (97), just like Alice had done a few minutes earlier. Alice's continued determination to persevere in this world of absurdities, and more specifically, her willingness to point out her weaknesses, might help explain why Carroll undertakes what he consciously seems to believe is an impossible mission: escaping reality. From the outset, Alice is characterized as plausibly human: she is rude, impatient, and repeatedly naive in her observations. Yet it is her flaws that allow us to identify with her as a representative of our own trap in reality. His youth provides the audience and Carroll with the opportunity to revisit the naive belief that there is escape in our daily experience and, furthermore, that with a methodical and logical approach it is possible to understand our surroundings. Although Alice is frustrated by the new reality she encounters and by its resistance to her systematic way of understanding it, despite all her difficulties, she optimistically continues her quest for the garden. During her second attempt, she asserts with confidence, the little golden key in hand: “Now, I will do better this time” (61). In her quest for escape and understanding, she becomes “the naive champion of the doomed human quest for meaning and lost Edenic order” (Rackin 96). Perhaps Carroll is suggesting that when faced with an earth's surface strewn with disappointment, anger and frustration, adults must keep Alice's resilience and conscience intact. Her ability to wake up and immediately go to tea, "thinking as she ran, as well as she could, what a wonderful dream it had been" provides a demonstration of this survival mechanism at work ( 98). There seems to be no distinction between his dream world and his living world; her imagination blends seamlessly with reality, suggesting that we too must follow Alice's example of how to deal with absurdities as we move from Alice's world to our own reality. Alice's inability to think about Wonderland is what allows her to proceed energetically to her next encounter. His line, “Who cares about you?” » … “You are nothing but a pack of cards!” ”, functions as an immediate rejection of injustice and unfairness and puts an end to problems (97). If there were. 1991.