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Home Middelbare School EN Uittreksels Uittreksel Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland

Uittreksel Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland

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Extracts English Literature
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Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland

Macmillan, London (1865).

Title:

The novel was first published in 1865, illustrated by Sir John Teniel. The "Wonderland" of the title is a dream world which comprise Alice's fantasies about the world of grown ups.

The character of Alice is modelled on Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College in Oxford, Henry Liddell, together with her two sisters Lorina and Edith. The actual story was first made up on 4 July 1862, when Lewis Carroll took Alice and her sister for a rowing trip on the Thames. It is said that the Dodo in the story is a representation of Lewis Carroll himself. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson stuttered a bit, which made him pronounce his surname Do-Do-Dodgson. The Lory and Eaglet are a representation of Alice's sisters.

Author:

Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in 1832 and he spent his childhood years in Cheshire, entertaining 10 siblings while his father took care of their education. At the age of twelve Lewis Carroll was sent to school. He went to Christchurch College, Oxford and contributed poems, rhymes and drawings to various magazines. For the rest of his life Lewis Carroll stayed on at the College as a tutor of mathematics. By 1855 Lewis Carroll was a regular contributor to The Comic Times, whose editor gave Charles Dodgson, mathematician, the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, under which all his literary works were submitted. In 1872, seven years after Alice in Wonderland, he published Through the looking glass and what Alice found there, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Together the novels are known as Alice's adventures in Wonderland. He died after a bout of influenza in 1898.

The literary period:

The novel was written in the Victorian Age, when social and political elements became more and more important.

The genre:

It is a fantasy story and can be compared with a modern fairy tale.

Summary:

Alice is sitting on the riverbank of the Thames with her elder sister and is bored. Suddenly a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat runs by and disappears down a rabbit hole.

Alice decides to go after it, but when the hole dips down Alice finds herself falling for a long time. She lands on a bed of dry leaves and follows a passage until she comes in a room with doors all around. One little door, concealed by a curtain, leads into a beautiful garden, but it is too small for Alice to go through. She drinks from a bottle labeled 'drink me' and becomes very small. She is now so small that she cannot reach the door key which is on the tabletop. She now eats a cake marked 'eat me' and she becomes very big. She is so confused that she starts crying, creating a pool of tears. She then tries to cool herself down with a fan left by the Rabbit, which makes her smaller and smaller again. She now is forced to swim in her own pool of tears where she meets some other small animals. When they finally get out of the water their problem is how to get dry. The Mouse wants to tell the driest piece of history to get dry, but the Dodo suggests a caucus-race.

When Alice is dry again she steps into the garden and sees a house, which she enters. Here she drinks from a bottle and immediately starts growing again. The other animals start throwing pebbles at Alice in order to get her out of the Rabbit's house. Alice sees that the pebbles are in fact little cakes and when she eats them she shrinks again.

She runs from the house to the safety of a wood. Here she meets a Puppy and an old Caterpillar who sits on a mushroom, smoking a pipe. When she tries to ask his advice her words come out in a strange way, and she cannot even repeat a poem that she knows quite well. The Caterpillar tells her to take a piece from each side of the mushroom, one side will make her grow and the other side will make her shrink.

Then she meets the Duchess, who lives in a cottage where a Fish-Footman delivers an invitation from the Queen to play croquet to a Frog-Footman. Alice goes to the kitchen where a cook is putting pepper into a cauldron full of soup and clouds of pepper hang around. The Duchess' son is crying and Alice takes him outside where he changes into a piglet. When she puts it down it runs into the wood. She meets the Cheshire cat, a mysterious, grinning animal. First his grin appears, then his head and then his body.

Alice walks on and she comes upon the Mad Hatter and the March Hare who are having a tea party with a sleeping Dormouse sitting between them. Although the two say that there is no room, Alice sees that there is plenty of room at the table and she seats herself. The Mad Hatter asks Alice questions to which no answers exist and riddles that have no solutions.

When she leaves she suddenly finds herself in the room with the many doors again. Now she can assume the right size by using the pieces of mushroom. She goes through the little door and finds herself in a beautiful garden where the Queen of Hearts' croquet party is about to start. Alice is invited to play and since the game is being played with living flamingoes and hedgehogs, it is not easy. Furthermore, the Queen orders everybody who disagrees with her to be beheaded. The game is finished when everybody except Alice is ordered to be beheaded.

Alice is then taken to meet the Mock Turtle to hear his story. First they meet a Gryphon who tells Alice that so far no one has actually been beheaded. The Mock Turtle tells Alice about his years at school where he had subjects like 'reeling', 'writhing' and 'fainting in coils'. The Mock Turtle teaches Alice the Lobster Quadrille, and while they are dancing the White Rabbit announces the trial of the Knave of Hearts who has stolen some tarts. Alice has to give evidence but she does not know anything about the case. Suddenly she starts growing again and she trips over the jury-box. The situation is by then so confusing that the Queen shouts 'sentence first - verdict later' against which Alice loudly protests. The Queen orders Alice to be beheaded but Alice tells her that nobody cares for her and that they are all nothing but a pack of cards. Then the whole pack rises into the air and flies down upon Alice. As she is trying to beat them off, she finds herself lying on the riverbank where her sister is brushing some leaves from her face and tells her how long she has slept.

Time:

Alice dreams the story while she is sleeping on the riverbank. There are no flashbacks. The time in which the story is set can not be derived from the text.

Setting:

An imaginary Kingdom at the bottom of an English rabbit-hole. The place of this Kingdom has a universal appeal, but it is England in which the whole story has its proper setting, the England of the Victorian Age and of the upper-middle class with well-brought-up daughters.

Characters and relationships:

Alice:

A ten year old girl, who dreams a story in which she encounters a lot of srange fairy tale characters,

who behave in the most illogical ways.

Further characters are:

The White Rabbit, the Mouse, the Dodo, the Caterpillar, the Duchess, her baby and

her cook, the Fish-Footman and the Frog-Footman, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the

King and Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and many others.

Credibility:

….

Theme:

The first part of the story deals with growing and shrinking, which can be seen as the process of growing up when little, which is an important issue for children. The fantastic animals Alice meets represent grown-ups from the Oxford environment. They behave in the most illogical ways and the more Alice tries to understand their thinking, the more confused she gets. It treats ordinary logic in an ironic way by playing word-games, setting riddles, and presenting absurd little rhymes and songs (which are themselves parodies on often strongly moralizing poems by, amongst others, William Wordsworth, which had to be learnt by heart at that time). The irony in the story, which ridicules official and pompous behavior in society, also comes to the fore by the stange illogical actions of the story's characters.

Motto:

All the golden afternoon

Full leisurely we glide;

For both our oars, with little skill,

By little arms are plied,

While little hands make vain pretence

Our wanderings to guide.

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,

Beneath such dreamy weather,

To beg a tale of breath too weak

To stir the tiniest feather!

Yet what can one poor voice avail

Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth

Her edict "to begin it":

In gentler tones Secunda hopes

"There will be nonsense in it!"

While Tertia interrupts the tale

Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,

In fancy they pursue

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast –

And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained

The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary one

To put the subject by

"The rest next time-" "It is next time!"

The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out –

And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,

Beneath the setting sun.

Alice! A childish story take,

And, with a gentle hand,

Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined

In Memory's mystic band,

Like pilgrim's wither'd wreath of flowers

Pluck'd in a far-off land.

This can be seen as the motto.

Linguistic usage:

The story was originally written for children, so the language used is not difficult to understand. The book also contains drawings, which makes the book even more fun to read.

Dedication:

None.

Perspective:

The story is narrated in the third person, told by an omniscient narrator who is especially interested in Alice's thoughts and feelings. This makes us look at the Wonderland through Alice's eyes.

Construction:

The novel has twelve chapters, named: 'Down the Rabbit-Hole', 'The Pool of Tears', 'A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale', 'The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill', 'Advice from a Caterpillar', 'Pig and Pepper', 'A Mad Tea-Party', 'The Queen's Croquet Ground', 'The Mock Turtle's Story', 'The Lobster Quadrille', 'Who Stole the Tarts?' and 'Alice's Evidence'.

Own opinion on the book:

Your opinion!

 

Excellence is not being the best; it is doing your best.

Uitmuntendheid is niet de beste zijn; het is je best doen.

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