Deeper, Hidden Meanings and Themes in Alice in Wonderland

A Quest Leading out of Childhood

The book Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, has been part of many childrens lives. It
seems like a simple fairy tale, but it goes much deeper than that.

The events in the story correlate with the steps in a child's growth and progression through
childhood and adolescence. According to editors Charles Frey and John Griffin, Alice is
engaged in a romance quest for her own identity and growth, for some understanding of logic,
rules, the games people play, authority, time, and death." When you approach the book with
this idea in mind, it offers interesting and meaningful interpretations of the events and
characters in the story.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to
another.
The Journey Begins with Curiosity

At the beginning of Alice in Wonderland, Alice daydreams and is unable to pay attention
while her sister reads an advanced novel to her. Alices mindset is childlike, distractible.
While her imagination runs wild, she begins to piece together a perfect world of her own.
That's when Alice notices a white rabbit, a manifestation of her imagination that sparks her
curiosity.

Alice follows the rabbit because she is 'burning with curiosity.' Soon she finds things
becoming 'curiouser and curiouser.'"

Children are usually the people with the most curiosity; they are the ones who are always
eager to learn more.

Later, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum tell her the tale of the Curious Oysters, which is about
how curiosity can lead to terrible consequences. This shows how adults often use stories to
control children with fear and to destroy children's sense of imagination and curiosity by
telling them to quit asking questions and grow up. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum symbolize
parents who are trying to keep Alice's imagination in check.

If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a
handsome pig, I think.
"Eat Me"

Alice gets in trouble because of her curiosity. The white rabbit tells her to run into the house
to quickly fetch his gloves. While searching for them, she opens a cookie jar only to find a
cookie with "Eat Me" written on it. Without thinking twice, she consumes the cookie.

Alice is still in her childhood stage and needs an adult figure to guide her. At this moment,
there is no such figure. We view children as needing gentle guidance if they are to develop
emotionally, intellectually, morally, even physically. (Henslin)

Alice's eating of the cookie represents two very important ideas. The first is, again, how
curiosity gets one into trouble. She eats the cookie after being told the tale of the Curious
Oysters, because a child will sometimes disobey and do something even after being told it is
wrong. By eating the cookie, she demonstrates Kohlbergs first theory of moral development,
stage one of the preconventional level, which states that right is whatever avoids punishment
or gains reward (Wood). Because there was no parent or adult figure around, curiosity
prevailed against better judgment, and she ate the cookie.

This situation may also be about peer pressure while growing up. Inside the cookie jar were
many cookies with labels with different instructions; the cookies were all telling her what to
do. Just like everyone does at some point, she gives in to peer pressure. As a consequence, she
grows rapidly into a giant. The white rabbit and other characters she encounters perceive her
giant self as a monster instead of a little girl. A society may perceive youngsters who give into
peer pressure, for example who take drugs or experiment in other reckless ways, as
monstrous.

On many occasions, Alice shows her juvenile nature, her child-like thinking, and confusion.
When she first falls down the rabbit hole and is confronted by the door, she gives herself
some good advice, saying, For if one drinks much from a bottle marked poison, it is almost
certain to disagree with one sooner or later. The door responds, I beg your pardon, with a
confused look on its face. In a relationship between a young child and an adult, the adult is
often unable to comprehend the child's logic. It isnt until the formal operations stage, at age
11 or 12, that the child is able to apply logical thought to abstract, verbal, and hypothetical
situations, (Wood). Obviously, Alice has not yet achieved this level of thinking.

Shortly after Alice enters Wonderland, she encounters something else that makes no sense to
her. When she is wet after being washed up onto the shore, she listens to a dodo bird who tells
her to run in a circle with everyone else in order to dry off. What he is telling her to do makes
no sense whatsoever, because the water keeps engulfing them, but she continues to do it
anyway. By blindly obeying the adult figure, she exposes her childlike ignorance.

Later in the book, Alice is confronted with another confusing situation. The White King is
waiting for his messengers and asks Alice to look along the road to see if they are coming. I
see nobody on the road, says Alice. "'I only wish I had such eyes,' the King remarked in a
fretful tone. 'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do
to see real people, by this light." This somewhat exemplifies the preoperational stage of
childhood which includes symbolic function, meaning that one thing can stand for another
(Wood). Apparently, the author is trying to get a point across that nobody can stand for a
person as well as nothing. Here is another lack of understanding between adults and
children, but this time, the adult's statement seems easier to comprehend for Alice, and makes,
surprisingly, more sense than her previous realization. This shows how she is mentally
progressing towards the formal operations stage, little by little.

I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this
morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the
next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!

"Who Are You?" "I Hardly Know."

As Alice progresses through her dream, she loses her sense of identity, just as most people do
when they hit adolescence.

When the Caterpillar asks Alice, 'Who are you,' and Alice can barely stammer out a reply, `I
hardly know,' then Carroll is exposing the quintessential vulnerability of the child whose
growth and knowledge of self and the world vary so greatly from day to day that a sense of
answerable identity becomes highly precarious, if not evanescent. (Frey).

At this point in the story, Alice has reached an age where she has lost her identity: that is,
adolescence.

In the industrialized world, children must find themselves on their own they attempt to
carve out an identity that is distinct from both the 'younger' world being left behind and the
'older' world that is still out of range, (Henslin). The caterpillar doesnt ever give Alice any
direction, and she is now forced to find out who she is on her own.

[She] is rarely aided by the creatures she meets. Whereas in a tale of Grimms or Andersen or
John Ruskin, the protagonist's meeting with a helpful bird or beast would signal his or her
charity toward the world or nature (Frey). In Alice in Wonderland, unlike other fairy tales,
the story represents a childs true progression through life. In real life, in the industrialized
world, a child has to figure things out on her own.

In sociology, there is a stage called transitional adulthood. This is a period where young adults
find themselves young adults gradually ease into responsibilities they become
serious. (Henslin) By the end of the story, Alice learns to deal with her problems and regains
sight of her identity. The queen, who loses her temper and wants to kill Alice, is the obstacle
that finally helps Alice to become an adult. To leap over this obstacle, she reaches into her
pocket to find a mushroom from earlier, eats it, and grows to an enormous size. This most
likely represents how she is facing her fear and taking on responsibility, or growing up.
Alice in Wonderland is a perfect example of childhood through adolescence. Just as a childs
life is filled with good and bad choices, Alice's is, too. As most do, she learns from her
experiences and ultimately becomes more matureemotionally, in how she deals with her
problems, and in the way she perceives different situations, all of which are encompassed in
the progression of a child.