AOW #22

IRB Entry:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Very early on in the story a recurring theme becomes present. Alice has just gone through a series of upsetting changes from a drink that made her shrink, and a cake that made her grow. She couldn’t seem to be the right size though to reach the garden that lay beyond a small door. She starts to question herself "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!" This tie’s well to puberty, the confusing changes and what they must feel like that children go through when they are around Alice’s age. The story does not only relate physically to the change to womanhood, it also follows Alice’s intellectual and emotional changes. The choice of setting is important in expressing the foreign and strange experience. It is an ever changing world that you would likely find in a child’s imagination, but it is so illogical that it challenges all that Alice has ever believed. Although I have not yet reached the point where Alice goes through a change, I predict that she will be a dynamic character, for she will have to eventually come to terms with this new world, and decide for herself "Who in the world am I?". However, I do find her at the moment to be a somewhat flat character. She is the most logical person in this world, and so her actions and choices often reflect in her rationality. She also maintains that somewhat innocent/ignorant child role of one who has been raised in a somewhat wealthy household and sticks to that mannerism. By writing the story from Alice's point of view, readers are able to better understand and relate to Alice's logic. For without that point of view, readers would not be able to connect to that aspect of how a child would think and react in a situation where an adult might react otherwise. Anyway, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, places readers into the shoes of a child and expresses to them the strange way a child’s mind works and grows. Without a child, the story would hold no purpose, it would have no underlying statement about the change every child goes through, it would just be a nightmarish trip through an insane and illogical world.