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  • Writer's pictureRina M. Steen

A Nonsensical Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland


A Nonsensical Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland


What exactly does it mean to ‘fall down a rabbit hole?’ Today, it is known as a popular expression that means to metaphorically fall into “extreme distraction;” but to Lewis Carroll, it involved a little girl named Alice following a waist-coated white rabbit down a rabbit hole and falling into the ever whimsical and peculiar Wonderland (The New Yorker). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, published in 1865, tells the story of a young girl journeying through Wonderland so that she may reach the ever-elusive garden and details her meetings with an abundance of anthropomorphic beings. The text uses a form of writing known as “nonsense,” and though difficult to define, is described to be an “area of literature [...] considered to be anarchic in its outlook, often combining elements of both violence and death,” where “reality itself is challenged” (McColloch). There is an abundance of these nonsensical elements present in Caroll’s beloved story, which this analysis will examine, including some of the most memorable instances Alice encounters as well as the novel’s overarching theme of childhood.


The nonsense literary genre allows the author to subvert logical reasoning so that even nonsense makes sense in a nonsensical world through the use of linguistic creativity, which is littered throughout Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This begins with Alice’s literal descent down the rabbit hole: “Either the well was very deep or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her” (Carroll 12). In this excerpt, Carroll uses nonsense to bend his description of reality and, thus, physics. It forces the reader to ponder the logic of this action: how can one fall slowly? This idea of Alice descending rather than falling down the rabbit hole is just one among many instances of story nonsense. However, there are also plenty of examples of textual nonsense that Carroll utilises through syntax, portmanteau words, and more. In Chapter 3 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a Mouse is telling Alice a story, wherein Carroll decisively blends the homonyms “tale” and “tail,” the product of which is a series of words trailing down the page like that of a mouse’s tail (Carroll 37-38). The irony is that Alice understands the Mouse’s “tale” to be in the shape of a “tail,” and so too does the reader. Another instance of textual nonsense derives from Carroll’s famous poem, “Jabberwocky,” featured in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In this poem, Carroll uses portmanteau words, or “two meanings packed up into one word,” as Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice, to create a new word whose meaning and significance consists of the respective words used to make the portmanteau (Carroll 256). For example, in “Jabberwocky,” terms like “slithy” combine the words “lithe and slimy,” among many other instances (Carroll 256). But the application of nonsense isn’t just limited to creative and textual elements of the story: the overarching theme of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is also unsurprisingly riddled with nonsense.


Even though Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland deviates from the traditional Victorian morals and didactic qualities of the time, Carroll utilises the nonsense form to invert the Victorian idealisation of childhood innocence to expose the transcendence into adulthood through nonsensical conventions. The central theme of growing up and childhood in the novel is presented through Alice, a young girl that tumbles into Wonderland and is unsure of her identity, or as Alice explains to the Caterpillar, “I can’t explain myself, [...] because I’m not myself, you see” (55). Alice’s sense of self is consistently at stake, distinctly represented through her fluctuation in size through the majority of the story due to consuming mysterious potions and bits of mushroom. However, in the end, through Alice’s excursion in Wonderland, she “‘reveals a fractured adult world of nonsensical rules and conventions’” (McCulloch). Wonderland, in its most whimsical and absurd form, can be regarded as a literary representation of childhood and the exiling from it—as seen when Alice finally regains her identity during the trial and grows to her full size without consuming anything and eventually wakes from her dream, sufficiently leaving Wonderland, and thus childhood. Through Alice’s conflict with her identity and the psychological space in which Wonderland exists, the novel’s overall theme of growing up truly prevails in the form of nonsense.


Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, while a beloved children’s classic, is brimming with literary nonsense and reveals a poignant commentary on identity and the progression from childhood. Using the nonsense form of writing allows Carroll to contribute towards the anxieties of growing up and impending adulthood prominent in the Victorian era through the character of Alice and her progression through Wonderland. Wonderland, as a whole, symbolises a place of childhood innocence, and, once Alice grows, she exits Wonderland and once more enters her own world. In this, Carroll establishes a social commentary on childhood as a space untainted by adulthood and what it truly means to transition from a space of wonder to one of responsibility and accountability.


Happy Reading!





Works Cited:


Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Everyman’s Library, 1992.

McCulloch, Fiona. Children's Literature in Context. Continuum, 2011.

Prados, Lara Ruiz. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Literary Nonsense: A

Deconstructive Analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Novel. Jan. 2018,

https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/29433/2/Lara_Ruiz_Prados_BA_Essay.pdf.

Schulz, Kathryn. “The Rabbit-Hole Rabbit Hole.” The New Yorker, 4 June 2015,

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rabbit-hole-rabbit-hole.


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