Alice in Wonderland [antikvár]

Introduction To READ AUce''s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Loolcing-Glass (1872) is to enter a surreal world. Adults may be confused by the absurdities of the books or be put off by the occasional flights of whimsy, but to many children there is a perverse logic to the inability of Alice to make sense of her surroundings. From the moment that she sees the White Rabbit and falls down the rabbit-hole, she embarks on a series of advenmres in which she meets the Duchess and die Cheshire Cat, who slowly fades away so that his grin is the last feature to disappear. She encoimters the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and die March Hare, the King and Queen of Hearts and the Mock Turde, and endures a lunatic trial for stealing a plate of tarts, and just as the Queen cries 'Off with her head' she awakes to find it was all a dream. Through the Looking-Glass is a continuation of Alice's advenmres fi-om die moment she steps tltfough the looking-glass into Looking-Glass House where she finds herself in a world of li\ing chessmen. Broolis and hedges divide die land into a chessboard, and Alice becomes a white pawn in a fantastic game of chess. At last she advances to the eighth square to become a queen, after weird encounters with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion and the Unicom and the White Knight. At her coronation Alice decides to revenge herself on the Red Queen for her enmity and gives her a good shake, only to wake up shaking the kitten diat had been sitting on her lap while she slept. .'Although the Alice stories were championed by the surrealists as early embodiments of their own principles, and students of Sigmund Freud have made much of the symbolism in them, it must be remembered that they were written as children's books. Part of Carroll never grew up, which is why tlie stories are so successful. He understood the frustrations of childhood, of being a pavm in a game controlled by the illogical rules of adults. What is sometimes seen as a sinister betrayal of children by adults, The Walrm and the Carpenter, the rhyme recited by Tweedledee in which baby oysters are consumed by their alleged protectors, provides a happy himting gi'ound for symbohsts. But it is no more horrific than, say, Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, and so once again the reader is urged to remember that these books were written for children.