One of the world's favorite fairy tales, “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, is full of magic and strangeness. Modern critics find in it everything from sex and drugs to colonial politics and eating disorders. Let's try to see through the eyes of many modern and not so modern critics what it really means to “fall down the rabbit hole.”

"Alice in Wonderland"

Lewis Carroll's fairy tale is full of magical cakes and other sweets, secret doors, wide smiling Cheshire cats and other unimaginable creatures, places and events. The book has never gone out of print since the first moment of its publication.

Over the course of one and a half centuries of existence, the fairy tale has become the source of inspiration for several films, cartoons, computer games, ballet and countless attractions, illustrations and paintings. Even micropsia, a neurological disorder in which a person perceives objects around him in a smaller form, is called Alice in Wonderland syndrome.

However, despite such a tremendous influence on modern culture, the most voluminous product inspired by the fairy tale has been attempts to interpret its symbols. It’s hard to even imagine how many scientific works have been written on the topic, and how many non-scientific ones... everyone who is not too lazy intends to decipher the “hidden message” of the fairy tale.

When you look deeper into these attempts to explain the magic of Wonderland, the beloved classic story appears less like a children's bedtime story and more like a complex, twisted allegory about sex, politics and drug addiction.

The story of the book and Alice

One of the most popular books in literary history had unusually humble roots. While sailing along the Thames, a certain Charles Dogson told a certain Alice Liddell and her sisters the story of the adventures of the girl Alice in an extraordinary, wonderful country.

The girls loved the story so much that they convinced Dogson to write it down and publish it. Taking the now well-known pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Charles Dogson listened to the advice and published his famous work.

Alice was the daughter of the dean of one of the Oxford colleges, where Charles Dogson taught mathematics. Alice was Dogson's favorite, but she was far from the only one of his little friends. To today's observer, who grew up on nightmarish stories about pedophilia and moral violence, this scenario of friendship between an adult man and little ten-year-old girls will seem extremely ambiguous. However, despite the description and photographs, there is not a single piece of evidence that Dogson's intentions were criminal. All the more unpleasant is the reading of some interpretations of the book based on the theory of psychoanalysis - a movement that was just gaining momentum during the first edition of Alice in Wonderland.

Theory of psychoanalysis

Over time, Victorian hypocrisy began to subside, and the development and popularization of the foundations of psychoanalysis gave impetus to not entirely childish interpretations of Alice in Wonderland. Critics read the fairy tale-dream of the girl Alice and explained it in accordance with Freud's theory. Not surprisingly, gynecological, sexual and phallic symbols appeared out of nowhere, the victims of which were the poor caterpillar, which, according to its own statement, has a wonderful size of three inches. The fall into the rabbit hole and the curtain that Alice must part are a reflection of the sexual act, as is the desire to pick up the keys to the locks.

Growing up

More philosophically minded critics perceived the psychoanalytic interpretation of the tale as an allegory of growing up. All this sexual symbolism was just a passage from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood, in which decisions must be made, the consequences of which affect others. Of course, this path also leads through puberty, because sexual and phallic symbols do not go away.

However, puberty, according to critics, is most clearly demonstrated in the changes in Alice's body - she is either too big, sometimes tiny, sometimes disproportionate. Psychologically, these changes lead to the fact that the girl cannot decide who she is and what she needs. She is in search of her Self, and in this search, Alice conflicts with authorities, doubts the legitimacy of the rules, learns to play adult games, acquires a sense of justice and for the first time faces the threat of death.

Drugs

Of course, there were those critics who focused on the too obvious narcotic nature of some events in the fairy tale. Images of a hookah-smoking caterpillar and hallucinogenic mushrooms only stimulate the imagination of those who want to interpret the whole story as one big “arrival.” Psychedelic imagery, falling down rabbit holes, characters disappearing and reappearing, meaningless phrases and memory problems have been interpreted as a result of regular drug use. It is worth saying that Dogson did not consume anything more dangerous than homeopathic cold medicines.

Politic system

It wasn't just drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll that were found between the lines of this classic English tale. Another school of critics viewed Alice in Wonderland as a political allegory. After the heroine jumps down the rabbit hole, she finds herself in a kingdom ruled by a hot-tempered and domineering person. This was seen as criticism of Queen Victoria, for whom, according to some reports, Dogson had no particular sympathy. In addition, the chaotic system of government and unclear laws also showed parallels with the Great Britain of the time of Lewis Carroll.

Colonization and attitudes towards colonies

Many critics perceived the behavior of Alice in Wonderland as a clear parallel with the attitude of the British towards their colonies. How does Alice behave after she finds herself in an unfamiliar, magical land with its own unique rules? Not understanding local customs and not knowing the laws, the girl seeks to establish her own rules in a new place. She is not at all embarrassed by the negative results of these attempts, and she continues to restore “order” where events occur according to completely different laws.

Considering all these theories, parallels and interpretations, one can clearly follow how society, its values ​​and interests have changed over the course of a century and a half. All these changes bring with them a new “lens” through which you can look at the existing text. This speaks first of all about the timelessness of the work and its quality. Any generation will find a reflection of their events and interests in it.

Riddles and solutions

On the pages of Alice in Wonderland, critics found everything: representation of nutrition problems, symbolic algebra, satire on the War of the Roses and the problem of slavery. In all this endless and bright stream of theories, it is not surprising to get lost and find yourself as dumbfounded as a little girl who finds herself in a magical land.

As a mathematician, Lewis Carroll filled his history with mysteries, from the Mad Hatter's riddles to playing croquet with the queen. No matter how Alice tries to solve them, they turn out to have little meaning, and the solutions lead her nowhere.

Even though in real life Carroll loved, studied, and taught logic, there is nothing logical in his fictional world. Perhaps the main message of his extraordinarily strange book is that the world is actually full of madness and illogicality, so instead of looking for an explanation for everything, you should just enjoy the magic.

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Analysis of the work" Alice in Wonderland" Lewis Carroll

L. Carroll's fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland" is one of the most famous works of world literature. Despite the fact that it has been translated into various languages, it is one of the most difficult works to translate. In this tale, the main character, one might say the “powerful character,” is the English language. Alice, and with her the author, peered into the depth of semantic expressions and only played them out. This game with language is a "philosophical game." It is this that underlies Carroll's method. For a translator, who must operate with the categories of another language associated with a completely different range of images and associations, this creates special difficulties. It is absolutely impossible to translate it into Russian, not that it was impossible to force Russian words to play the same games and show the same tricks that English words did under Carroll's magic pen, but what was most important was lost, and the fairy tale became boring and unpleasant.

I. Characteristics of heroes (characters of the work)

Wonderland Characters:

White Rabbit

Blue Caterpillar

Duchess

Cheshire Cat

March Hare

Hatter

Sonya Mouse

Queen of Hearts

King of Hearts

Jack of Hearts

Quasi Turtle

Tweedledee and Tweedledee

White Chess Queen

White Chess King

White knight

Unicorn

Humpty Dumpty

Black Chess Queen

Black Chess King

Positive heroes:

· Alice(main character)- eternal dreamer. She is never bored: she will always invent a game or entertainment for herself. At the same time, the main character is extremely polite to everyone, regardless of the person’s origin and personal qualities. Well, she is moderately naive - this is due to her young age and dreaminess. Another integral feature of Alice is curiosity. It is thanks to him that she gets into all sorts of troubles and adventures. In the team she plays the role of an observer: she definitely needs to see how the matter ends. But if she becomes interested, she will go to the end to satisfy her curiosity. And he will get out of any situation unharmed, thanks to his inexhaustible ingenuity.

· Alice's friend - Mad Hatter (Hatter)- Hatmaker, one of the participants in the Mad Tea Party. In the book, when he meets Alice, he behaves tactlessly, so the main character asks him “not to get personal.” He asks her riddles and periodically tries to wake up Dormouse. In the words of the Cheshire Cat, Hatter is "out of his mind." In addition to the fact that the character constantly drinks tea, he sells hats and sings songs at a concert. At the trial, he was the first witness, describing himself as a "little man" who was as round as his hats. He is fearless, rushes to Alice's defense, even risking his own life. Just as he became a skilled hatmaker in the service of the White Queen, he was struck down by the disease mercurialism (mercury poisoning), an unfortunate side effect of hatmaking, and so he did not feel well.

· White Rabbit- A talking animal with pink eyes, dressed in a vest and kid gloves. He carries a watch in his pocket and lives in a “clean house” with the inscription: “B. Rabbit.” The rabbit is always late for something, and is always a kind of guide for Alice, helping her fall into Wonderland. The author noted that the Rabbit was created to contrast with the main character: he is timid, weak-minded and fussy. He must find Alice and bring her to Down Under so that she can fulfill her destiny - this is why the rabbit shows up at the garden party, where Alice notices him, and leads her to the rabbit hole. The rabbit is sometimes extremely irritable and strict with Alice. It feels like Time is very important to him and it makes him nervous and catch up.

· King of Hearts - Husband of the Queen of Hearts. Represents a more moderate direction in the government of Wonderland compared to his cruel wife, whose favorite command is "Cut off the head!" For example, when the Queen tries to execute Alice (blaming her for not being able to answer who lies in front of her), the King reminds the Queen that Alice is still a child. He also quietly forgives many of those whom the Queen ordered beheaded while she was not looking - as a result, only a few of them are executed. However, when the Queen plays croquet, the only players left at the end are the King, Queen and Alice.

· Cheshire Cat - Alice affectionately called him Cheshik and considered him her friend. The cat himself thinks that he is out of his mind, because (unlike dogs) he grumbles when he is happy and wags his tail when he is angry. He knows how to disappear - both completely and partially - leaving only a smile or a head. He radiates calmness, impressiveness, and hides his cowardice behind a seductive smile. He offers to clean the wounds on her hand by licking them. Alice refuses the "so flattering" offer, but agrees that the Cat will take her to the Hatter's tea party, where the Hatter accuses the Cat of running away on the day the Red Queen seized the throne of Down Under. Later, thanks to his abilities and the Mad Hatter's hat, the Cat makes amends and is rehabilitated in the eyes of his friends.

· Blue Caterpillar - The insect is blue in color and three inches tall. He sits on a porcini mushroom and smokes a hookah. The Caterpillar's advice that one should always control oneself expressively parodies the main technique of moralizing literature for children of the early 19th century. In the later version of the tale, the Caterpillar asks Alice to bite off different sides of the mushroom, while in the original version - from the cap and from the stem.

· Dodo speaks “not humanly”: his speech is overloaded with scientific terms. He organizes a Circle Run, after which he declares everyone who participated in the race the winners. As a result, Alice has to give everyone a candied fruit, and she herself has to receive her own thimble from Dodo. The Dodo bird is a reflection of Carroll himself. Dodo wears glasses and a cane. Dodo is calm and intelligent, and it is he who stops his friends' argument regarding Alice's identity by offering to take her to the wise Caterpillar Absolem.

· Tweedledee and Tweedledee mentioned in the list of figures placed by Carroll before the text of the tale itself. Both of them are white. They are supposed to be rooks. The first mention of Tweedledum and Tweedledum occurs when the Black Queen points the way to Alice's royal throne. According to her, the houses of Tweedledum and Tweedledum are located between the railway and the Sheep's shop. Next, Alice sees signs “To Tweedledee’s House” and “To Tweedledee’s House.” They point in one direction. Alice decides to follow the signs until she comes to a fork. Then Alice realizes that Tweedledee and Tweedledum are living together. Alice mistakes Tweedledee and Tweedledee for two bags of wool, however, the misunderstanding is quickly cleared up. Upon meeting, Alice immediately remembers the poem, and the actions develop, in general, in accordance with it - Tweedledum found a broken rattle and the brothers decide to piss each other off, but a raven flies in and the brothers hide in the forest, and Alice meets the White Queen, who is looking for a shawl, carried away by the wind, which was raised by the raven. Naive and childish, charming and sweet, they sincerely want to help, but they are of little use, because they speak in tongue twisters, constantly interrupting each other.

· Jack of Hearts - He first appears in Chapter Eight, "Royal Croquet", where he carries the crown. Shown as a kind character. Knave then appears in the chapter "Who Stole the Pretzels?", where he is the main suspect. (The image of the Knave of Hearts is taken from children's English poems about the Knave who stole pretzels from the Queen of Hearts). He was almost killed by the Hatter, but survived. He was sent into exile with the Queen, which was worse for him.

· White knight - When the Black Officer tried to capture the pawn Alice, the white officer saved her and escorted her to the next square.

· White Chess Queen - One of the chess Queens who are going to examine Alice in order for her to become a Queen. In one of the scenes, the White Queen tells Alice about how you can live backwards and remember the future. The White Queen's shawl flies away, and in pursuit of it, she and Alice cross the stream and turn into a Sheep sitting knitting.

· Black Chess Queen- Alice first meets the Black Queen in Chapter I, "The House in the Mirror", when she sees her as tall as a chess piece. However, in chapter

“The Garden Where the Flowers Spoke” Alice meets the Queen, who is already of normal height, and she invites her to become a white pawn so that Alice, having reached the 8th square, can turn into a queen. When Alice reaches the 8th square, the White and Black Queens say that in order to become a queen, she needs to pass the “Royal Exam”, and begin to ask her questions, for example, what will happen if you divide a bun into bread, etc. Soon the Black and White Queens fall asleep and Alice becomes queen.

· Black Chess King - Husband of the Black Queen. Tweedledum and Tweedledee assure Alice that he only exists because the Black King dreams of him.

· White Chess King - Alice first meets him in the first chapter of "Through the Looking Glass House". She then meets him in chapter seven, "The Lion and the Unicorn". He believes that when you feel sick, you should eat splinters. Has two messengers "one runs there, the other from there." He loves accuracy (he specifies the number of troops sent) and writes everything down in a book. The king is amazed that Alice sees Nobody and asks to sit down “for a minute.” Has a daughter, Lily.

· Sheep hands Alice the knitting needles, which turn into oars, and Alice discovers that she and the Sheep are floating in a boat on the river. Soon Alice and the Sheep find themselves in the shop again, and Alice buys one egg, which in the Sheep's shop costs more than two eggs. Alice tries to take the egg she bought from the shelf, crosses the stream, and the egg turns into Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall.

· Unicorn and Lion - In the arrangement of the pieces before the start of the game, the Unicorn is classified as a white piece, and the Lion is classified as a black piece. The Lion and the Unicorn, according to the King's first statement, are fighting for his own crown. Lion and Unicorn are quite cute animals. The Unicorn tries to make friends with Alice, and the Lion offers to eat pie in honor of friendship. This is where some complications arise. Looking-glass pies must first be distributed and then cut. Alice tried to do everything normally. Suddenly, a drum roll is heard, and Alice finds herself in the forest.

· Humpty - Dumpty sits cross-legged on a high wall and acts as a looking-glass sage who helps Alice understand the meaning of the words from the poem about the Jabberwocky. Humpty Dumpty insists that every name must mean something. In addition, he claims that words have the meaning that he himself gives them. He has a special closeness to the King, receiving gifts from him on his “unbirthday” (that is, all other days of the year except one). After the fall of Humpty Dumpty, the White King sends “all the King's horses and all the King's men” to collect him. Saying goodbye to Alice, Humpty Dumpty says that the next time they meet, he will not recognize her, since he cannot distinguish her face from the faces of other people. Thus, Lewis Carroll gives one of the first descriptions of prosopagnosia, a mental disorder expressed in the inability to recognize faces. Informally, this disorder is sometimes called "Humpty Dumpty syndrome."

Neutral heroes:

· Quasi Turtle - A turtle with a calf's head, tail, large eyes and hooves on its hind legs. Kwazii said that he was once a real Turtle and went to a school at the bottom of the sea, where he learned French, music, arithmetic, dirty writing and other sciences. The Queen reveals that it is from this character that the quasi-turtle soup is prepared. In the fairy tale, the character constantly cries. This is justified from a biological point of view. Sea turtles actually shed tears often - this is how they remove salt from their bodies.

· Griffin - a mythical creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. During conversations, he periodically coughs. Griffin, by his own admission, received a “classical education” - he played hopscotch with his teacher all day long.

· March Hare - participant of the Mad Tea Party. Carroll gave him the epithet crazy: he lives in a house where all the furnishings are shaped like a hare's head.

The March Hare feels compelled to constantly act as if it were tea time.

The book briefly shows how the March Hare lives in a house where all the furniture and all the clocks are shaped like a hare's head, which convinces Alice that the hare is indeed "raving mad."

The March Hare appears as a witness at the trial of the Knave of Hearts.

· Sonya Mouse - member of the Mad Tea Party. Most of the time he sleeps; Hatter and Hare use it as a pillow. Sometimes in his sleep he starts to sing, then they pinch his sides to make him stop. During the court hearing, Sonya reprimands Alice for growing too fast. According to the events of the fairy tale, Sonya was periodically in the teapot. This is based on the fact that children during Victorian England kept dormouse as pets in teapots that were filled with grass and hay.

Negative heroes:

· Queen of Hearts - In the fairy tale, she appears as a cruel antagonist who, with a certain periodicity, tries to cut off the heads of many other characters. She is often in an irritated or furious state. Has a loud, shrill voice. Alice has an antipathy towards the Queen.

The Queen is a very powerful and cruel woman: she mocks the cute creatures of Wonderland. Believes he has the right to carry out mass executions. Also commands cards and the monstrous Jabberwock. Feeds on people's positive emotions. But she is powerless against the smart and inventive Alice.

Plotworks:

Alice, bored on the river bank with her sister, suddenly sees the White Rabbit in a hurry, holding a pocket watch in his paw. She follows him down a rabbit hole, falls down it, and ends up in a hall with many locked doors. There she finds the key to a small 15-inch door, behind which she can see the garden, but cannot get into it due to her height.

Alice discovers various objects that increase and decrease her height. After crying, she notices the Rabbit, who has dropped his fan and gloves. After waving her fan, she shrinks and falls into a sea of ​​her own tears. Alice meets a mouse and various birds, listens to the story of William the Conqueror, and plays Circle Run to dry herself off. The rabbit asks Alice to find his things and sends her to his house. Leaving the gloves there, Alice drinks the strange liquid from the bottle and grows again, barely fitting into the Rabbit’s home.

The latter, trying to find out what is happening, sends Bill the lizard through the chimney, but Alice kicks him back out. The pebbles thrown at her turn into pies; Having eaten them, the main character shrinks again and runs away from home. While searching for the garden she saw through the door, she meets the Caterpillar. She advises her to control herself and, in order to regain her normal height, bite off a piece of mushroom.

Alice follows her advice, but various metamorphoses begin to occur to her: her shoulders either disappear or her neck becomes elongated. Finally she shrinks down to 9 inches and sees the house. After talking with the Frog and entering the building, Alice discovers the Cheshire Cat, the Cook and the Duchess rocking a baby in the kitchen. Having taken the child, the girl leaves the house, and the Duchess announces that she is going to go to croquet. However, the baby turns into a pig and has to be released.

The Cheshire Cat appears on a tree branch. Having said that the Hatter and the March Hare live nearby, he disappears. Alice ends up at the Mad Tea Party, where she tries to solve riddles, listens to the Hatter's thoughts about time and Sonya's fairy tale about three sisters. Offended by the rudeness of the owners, Alice leaves.

Entering the door in one of the trees, the main character again enters the hall and finally enters the garden. In it, she meets the Card Guardians, who mistakenly planted white roses instead of red ones and repainted them in the desired color. After some time, a procession led by the King and Queen of Hearts approaches them. Having learned about the soldiers' guilt, the Queen orders their heads to be cut off, but Alice quietly hides the condemned men in a flower pot. Alice learns from the Rabbit that the Duchess has been sentenced to death.

Everyone who comes begins to play croquet, where flamingos act as clubs and hedgehogs instead of balls. The Queen is trying to cut off the head of the Cheshire Cat, but this plan was not realized - the cat only has his head, which is gradually melting. After talking with the Duchess about morality, Alice, together with the Queen, goes to the Quasi Turtle and the Griffin. The turtle talks about his past when he was a real turtle, sings songs and dances. Then the main character, together with the Griffin, rush to the trial.

There, the Knave of Hearts, who stole seven tartlets from the Queen, is on trial, and the King of Hearts himself presides. The first witness is the Hatter, who talks about how he prepared the sandwich. The second witness is the Cook, who told the court that tartlets are made from pepper. The last witness is called Alice herself, who at that very moment suddenly began to grow again. The Queen demands that Alice's head also be cut off, and that the jury pronounce a verdict regardless of the defendant's guilt. The girl grows to her normal height, and then all the cards rise into the air and fly into her face.

Alice wakes up and finds herself lying on the shore, and her sister is brushing dry leaves off her. The main character tells her sister that she had a strange dream and runs home. Her sister, who also dozed off, again sees Wonderland and its inhabitants. She imagines Alice growing up and telling her children about her sorrows, joys and happy summer days.

The main idea of ​​the work.

The historical boundaries of the work are 40-70 years of the nineteenth year. Nonsense assimilates the traditions of romantic poetics, the rejection of some canons, and gray everyday reality. In the nonsense genre, the category of childishness is important: the cult of the child is combined with the cult of eccentricity. Eccentricity and childhood are the two main themes of the book. Nonsense creates its own special laws. The peculiarity of the work is that it is anti-didactic and non-religious. If Victorian literature gravitates towards strict norms, then all generally accepted moral and religious-scientific norms are overturned in nonsense. Nonsense differs from satire in the different nature of laughter, which is not journalistic, it is abstract and universal. The nature of laughter connects the nonsense genre with romantic irony, which is parodic in nature. Nonsense removes the parody aspect

Languageworks.

Despite the fact that immediately after its publication, “Alice” received wary and sometimes negative reviews from critics, readers immediately liked the world invented by Lewis Carroll. Later, positive assessments of Carroll’s surreal fantasies began to appear in the press: by the beginning of the 20th century, the world had “grown up” to “Alice.” Perhaps, everyone who has read the book looks into it again and again with pleasure, rushing into the thick of dizzying events following the White Rabbit. And each time he discovers previously unexplored nooks and crannies of Wonderland, discovers new features of its inhabitants and quotes with enthusiastic rapture the witty remarks of the fairy tale heroes.

A fairy tale, in the author’s understanding, is an encrypted mathematical problem behind which lies a certain philosophical meaning. A special technique of childish detachment and alienation is used. This is a look at the familiar from an unusual side, from the point of view of a child. Carroll's only goal is to entertain young listeners with an unusual structure and an abundance of humor.

Genre features of the work:

Carroll in "Alice in Wonderland" views the Universe as an uncontrollable chaotic flow and tries to counter this philosophical and skeptical vision of the world with the means of romantic irony. He turns all human realities into a structural game and reduces intricate human relationships to an ironic “logical game.” Carroll builds a closed system consisting of words. This world is unusual, but unlike the real world, which the writer perceives as chaos, his fairy-tale space is not chaotic.

This tale is characterized by irony and parody, sometimes even travesty of the narrative. But the writer’s irony is of a fundamentally different nature. carol tale philosophical

Carroll turns to folklore without limiting himself to fairy tales alone, although the latter certainly plays an important role in the genesis of his works. The structure and classical elements of folk tales undergo changes in his work. He also turns to folk songs. Carroll does not just insert old folk songs into this tale, he unfolds them into entire prose plots, preserving the spirit and character of folklore heroes and events.

Educational, cognitive, aesthetic value of the work from the point of view of the characteristics of children's perception.

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Lewis Carroll's famous fairy tale "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was written a century and a half ago and at first glance is a pile of all sorts of absurdity, difficult to perceive even by children, for whom it seems to be intended... And this is what makes researchers look for hidden codes in it . Some of the findings are puzzling...

Nonsense instead of a fairy tale

It is well known that the English canon and teacher of mathematics and logic at Christ Church College, Oxford, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was hiding under the name Lewis Carroll. He wrote two stories about the adventures of the girl Alice in a fantasy world for the daughters of the college dean, with whom he became very close friends - Lorina, Alice and Edith Liddell.

However, books about Alice initially caused a flurry of negative criticism. "Rave!" - authoritative literary critics spoke about them. Indeed, a typical children's fairy tale is a story about the adventures of positive protagonists, who, as a rule, fight evil and defeat it at the end of the story... Usually in such texts everything is simple, understandable and logical.

Carroll's Alice finds herself in the real "realm of the absurd", where it is unclear "who is who" and why certain things exist... And the heroine herself is not at all like the seven-year-old girl she is "according to legend." She is too smart for a child, quite educated and often thinks not at all like a child...

It was only later that it dawned on the critics. The fact is that Lewis Carroll’s creations were literally dotted with riddles, puzzles, charades and puzzles at every step - scientific, literary, logical...

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland": From Conception to Drugs

Psychoanalyst William Empson believes that Alice's fall down the rabbit hole symbolizes the process of conception.“Alice diving into a hole is the father, Alice, finding herself inside the hole, is already an embryo, and she can only be born by becoming a mother, inside of whom her own amniotic fluid is formed,” he claims.

Some people also find a hint of drugs in the fairy tale. So, let’s remember the lyrics of the song “White Rabbit” performed by the rock band Jefferson Airplane: “Remember what Sonya said / Feed your head, feed your head”... And the hookah-smoking Caterpillar with his magic mushroom? There are also those who are convinced that Alice’s entire journey is a metaphor for a drug “trip”... However, in the 60s of the last century, many things that are known to today’s connoisseurs of psychedelics simply did not exist yet...

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Literary scholars believe that the prototypes of such fairy tale characters as Duck, Dodo, Laurie and Iglet were Carroll's friend, a priest named Duckworth, the writer himself, whose real name was Dodgson, as well as Lorina and Edith - the sisters of Alice Liddell, with whom, in fact, , and the main character is “copied”.

There is an episode in the book in which the characters emerge from the Sea of ​​Tears: “water flowed from each stream, everyone was chilled and felt out of place.” In real life, the prototypes went boating, got caught in a thunderstorm and got wet in the rain... Many of the details mentioned in the story correspond to local realities: a healing lake in the village of Bisney near Oxford, croquet played by the heroine...

Various foods and drinks are also often mentioned in Alice. Literally at the very beginning, the heroine drinks from a bottle with the inscription: “Drink me” and shrinks, and after taking a bite from a cake that says: “Eat me,” she grows to gigantic proportions...

There are many scenes in the plot in which the characters eat and drink. Some fear that they themselves will be eaten... Some critics believe that the author suffered from eating disorders (by the way, he was skinny and often ate only cookies for lunch). Others suggest that the Liddell family often held picnics, in which Dodgson also took part... There is also a version that the physical changes happening to Alice indicate real changes in her life.

Is life a dream?

There are also quite good reasons to consider the entire plot of the fairy tale... just a dream! Carroll himself told playwright Tom Taylor: “It’s all a dream, but I don’t want anyone to guess it until the very end.” There is no logical sequence between many of the actions and events that occur in the book. So, the white rabbit, with whom it all begins, then appears and then disappears.

The caterpillar suddenly turns into a Cheshire cat, people and other creatures behave absurdly, it is difficult to discern the motives of certain of their actions... It is not for nothing that the plot of “Alice” is often called “confusion.”

These 25 quotes from Lewis Carroll's legendary book about life and its laws. We begin to understand these clearly not childish statements only when we grow up!

1. You need to run as fast as you can just to stay in place, and to get somewhere, you need to run at least twice as fast!

2. Everything has its own morality, you just need to be able to find it!

3. - You cannot believe in the impossible!
“You just don’t have enough experience,” the Queen remarked. “When I was your age, I devoted half an hour to this every day!” On some days, I managed to believe in a dozen impossibilities before breakfast!

4. You know, one of the most serious losses in battle is losing your head.

5. Tomorrow never happens today! Is it possible to wake up in the morning and say: “Well, it’s finally tomorrow”?
6. Few people find a way out, some don’t see it even if they find it, and many don’t even look for it.

7. - Taking anything seriously in this world is a fatal mistake.
- Is life serious?
- Oh yes, life is serious! But not very...

8. I have seen such nonsense, in comparison with which this nonsense is an explanatory dictionary!

9. The best way to explain is to do it yourself.

10. If every person minded his own business, the Earth would spin faster.

11. - Where can I find someone normal?
“Nowhere,” answered the Cat, “there are no normal people.” After all, everyone is so different and dissimilar. And this, in my opinion, is normal.

12. Just think that because of some thing you can become so small that you become nothing.

13. No matter how she tried, she could not find a shadow of meaning here, although all the words were completely clear to her.

14. If your head is empty, alas, the greatest sense of humor will not save you.

15. - What do you want?
- I want to kill time.
- Time really doesn’t like being killed.

16. She always gave herself good advice, although she did not follow it often.

17. “Don’t be sad,” said Alice. - Sooner or later everything will become clear, everything will fall into place and line up in a single beautiful pattern, like lace. It will become clear why everything was needed, because everything will be right.

18. - What are those sounds over there? - Alice asked, nodding at the very secluded thickets of some pretty vegetation at the edge of the garden.
“And these are miracles,” explained the Cheshire Cat indifferently.
- And.. And what are they doing there? - the girl asked, inevitably blushing.
“As it should be,” the cat yawned. - They happen...

19. If this were so, it would be nothing. If, of course, it were so. But since this is not so, it is not so. This is the logic of things.

20. Whatever is said three times becomes true.

21. Never consider yourself to be different from what others do not consider you to be, and then others will not consider you to be different from what you would like to appear to them.

22. Ten nights are ten times warmer than one. And ten times colder.

23. - Tell me, please, where should I go from here?

Where do you want to go? - answered the Cat.
“I don’t care...” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter where you go,” said the Cat.

24. The plan, needless to say, was excellent: simple and clear, it couldn’t have been better. It had only one drawback: it was completely unknown how to carry it out.

25. If everything in the world is meaningless, said Alice, what prevents you from inventing some meaning?

The fairy tale "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is infinitely larger and more significant than everything that critics write. Of the several thousand books and articles written under the influence of Alice over 150 years, only a few treat the fairy tale as an amusing description of all sorts of nonsense. Much more often, it is considered a mystery that needs to be solved by studying all the details in great detail - in the hope that careful study will help unravel this mystery and understand what Carroll really wanted to say.

Sex

Despite the fact that the plot requires us to get into Alice's thoughts, some readers felt that the book allowed us to learn more about the author himself. Psychoanalysts seized on this idea especially zealously. William Empson noted with undisguised glee that Alice “diving into the hole is the father; Alice, inside the hole, is already an embryo, and she can only be born by becoming a mother, inside of whom her own amniotic fluid is formed.” Alice's attempts to open the curtain and squeeze through the small door also gave rise to comment, especially against the backdrop of the story of Carroll's friendship with his “little friends.” His defenders point out that such interpretations are more likely to speak about our own fears than about Carroll's nature.

Drugs

An even more popular theory is that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a thinly veiled allegory of drug use. Songs like Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" ("Remember what the Dormouse said / Feed your head, feed your head") instilled in a generation of readers the idea that Alice's journey into the dungeon was somewhat a different kind of travel. In fact, there is no evidence that Carroll ever tried drugs, other than homeopathic remedies with alarming names, including “monkshood and arsenic,” which she self-prescribed to relieve a bad cold. But for many people, the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar and its magic mushroom are much more associated with the 1960s than with the 1860s.

Jokes

To understand some chapters of the book, you need to know local realities and personal details. For example, Duck, Dodo, Laurie and Iglet are fairy tale heroes who do not speak human language, the prototypes of which were the priest Duckworth, the writer Dodgson himself (Carroll's real name - approx. translation) and Alice's sisters - Ina and Edith. And the description of them emerging from the Sea of ​​Tears (“everyone was dripping with water, everyone was chilled and uncomfortable”) is a distorted memory of a boat ride during which a thunderstorm began and everyone got wet from the rain. There are many other details related to local realities: in the village of Binsey near Oxford there is a real healing lake; Alice plays a grotesque game of croquet, vaguely reminiscent of the games she played at Christ Church. In general, many critics are convinced that the entire tale is filled with so many allusions to the city that it should be considered an intricate, humorous parody of Oxford.

Starting with the bottle (“DRINK ME”), from which Alice shrinks in size, and the cake (“EAT ME”), from which Alice grows to gigantic proportions, Carroll often mentions food and drink in his plot. It's not always a direct reminder (there's no tea at the Hatter's Mad Tea Party), but many of the creatures in Wonderland spend their time either eating or fearing that they themselves will be eaten. According to some critics, the plot partly describes eating disorders, hinting that Carroll himself was thin as a sliver and often limited himself to cookies at lunch. Others see it as an elaborate tribute to the tea parties he hosted for the Liddell children. But almost everyone agrees that the sudden physical changes that occur to Alice provide a comical representation of the events that inevitably occur in life. It is in fairy tales that children-heroes remain children forever, but in real life children grow up.

“It’s all a dream,” Carroll told playwright Tom Taylor, “but I don’t want anyone to guess it until the end.” Beginning with the Rabbit, who appears and disappears like magic tricks in real life, the plot of Carroll's tale develops further, turning into the alternation of vague and distinct plausible events characteristic of a real dream. But everything is changing very quickly. Even the words begin to get confused: “Did you say “pig” or “fig?” asks the Cheshire Cat, who appears only after the Caterpillar disappears (in real life the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, and in dreams the caterpillar turns into a cat). Usually the phrase that the writer writes as if he were describing a dream means nothing. But that's exactly what Carroll tried to do. In his tale, he cut the world around him into pieces, and then put them back together, turning them into a crazy and fantastic confusion.