Alice in Wonderland door Lewis Carroll

Outside Reading Assignment

Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The main character is a little girl named Alice and while she is dreaming she is in a wonderland.
Author: Lewis Carroll - his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgsen. He lived in England all his life. Lewis had many professions, besides being an author, he was also a mathematician, logician, Anglican Clergyman and photographer. He was born in 1832 and had a stammer problem. But he was a very good entertainer. In 1856 he met the Liddell family, who he grew very fond of. Many say their young daughter Alice is the inspiration for Alice from the book, although he always denied it. There is one poem at the end of ‘Through the Looking Glass’ where you can read Alice Liddell’s full name if you take the first letter from each line reading downwards.
Number of pages: 100
Publication: ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ was first published in the year 1865 in England.

Characters: the main character is off course Alice. She is a young girl who has a lot of imagination and likes to be active. She has a cat, which she frequently talks about and an older sister, which she is with in the beginning and the end of the book. Alice likes to talk with herself, like she has two personalities. You can read that she also likes to sound smart and wants to be smart, whenever she gives comment that she thinks sounds very mature, she is very proud of herself.

The Queen is also main character. She is very dominant and it sounds like she is a real dictator. She has a husband and children, but she definitely has all the power. One of her favorite things to do is execute people, but before it actually happens, her husband usually pardons them behind her back. The people are very afraid of her and like to avoid her as much as possible.

The last main character is the White Rabbit. He doesn’t exactly talk to Alice that much, but wherever Alice goes, she almost always sees him there. He is a very stressed person and forgets a lot of things while he is in a hurry. He works for the queen and he talks very fast.

Setting: The book does not really say when this story takes place but it is probably in the 1800’s. and she probably lives in England. Alice is first outside, with her sister, who is reading. After she goes through the rabbit hole she is underground and goes from place to place. She is mostly in the house of the duchess and the Queen’s garden.

Quotes: 1) when Alice looks for something to eat or drink she finds a mushroom of about her size. She looks on top of it and there is caterpillar smoking a hookah. When he notices her, he asks her ‘Who are you?’ and she doesn’t really know what to answer to that. Because she believes that she is no longer in her own body, and that she is a completely different person. Throughout the book she thinks about this and argues about it with herself.
2) The Queen loves to execute people and therefore her favorite quote is ‘Off with his/her head!’ this shows you how scary this woman is and why everybody is afraid of the queen, even her husband a little bit. When Alice meets the Queen, you’ll see this quote quite a lot.

Plot: Alice is outside with her older sister who is reading a book. She is very bored, until she sees a white rabbit running away, who is talking. She follows the rabbit into the rabbit hole. Inside, there are a lot of halls and she finds one with doors that are all locked. In the middle of the room she sees a table with a key, she can open a door at the end of the hall and she finds this beautiful garden but she is too big. After a lot of shrinking and growing, she finally shrinks again and finds herself swimming in her own tears. She finds other animals and when the water is gone they tell each other stories. Later, Alice finds the white rabbit again and she goes to his house to find his gloves, here she grows larger than the house it self. When she finally gets back to her normal size she runs into a wood where she finds a puppy that is much larger than she is, when she runs away from him she finds a caterpillar on a mushroom, after having a discussion with him she meets the duchess, who leaves her with a baby to go to the Queen. Alice finds out the baby is actually a pig and lets it loose. After meeting more creatures, she finally reaches the garden of the Queen, who wants to chop her head off. Instead, they will play a game, but isn’t played as it is supposed to be. The Queen leads Alice to the Mock Turtle, who is always sad and also tells her his story. Later, they go to a trial, where someone is about to be executed. Here is where Alice starts to wake up, because it was all a dream. When she is awake she tells her sister all about her dream. At the end of the book, you can read how her sister is thinking about Alice, that when she grows up and has children, she can tell all these wonderful stories to her children.

Theme: I think the theme is humor and the unknowing
Comment: I have never seen the movie and I had never read the book. I knew a little bit about the story and was very excited to read it. But I really was disappointed. A lot of different things happened (Alice met a lot of different creatures) in a short time, and so it felt like there really wasn’t that much of a story line, it all just happened. The creatures were very strange, just like Alice. They all talked to themselves and never answered to anybody. Especially Alice was different. She had so many conversations with herself. Personally, I just thought it would be a fun book, but I didn’t think it was interesting and I really did not enjoy reading it.