What A Match Essay, Research Paper

Carroll s Looking Glass

During the Victorian age, many poets flourished in the spotlight of being independent in their own creative way of composing poetry and literature. During a time of strict morals, many people felt that there was a need to break loose. Lewis Carroll, a math professor, had a tremendous imagination and used it to his advantage to create some of the most profound stories for children.

At this time in society, the Industrial Revolution began. Social reform took place, and the government was still unsteady. To a child, these issues were as confusing as a Rubik cube. Carroll wrote the story, Alice in Wonderland, to elude the reader to the confusion a child has towards society. Lewis Carroll, greatly frustrated by this chaotic nature, endlessly sought for order, just as his character Alice searches for order in this grotesque Wonderland. For example, Alice must learn to play croquet in a grotesque and ridiculous fashion, with flamingos as mallets and hedgehogs as balls. Whereas the game of croquet itself possesses meaning, this absurd way of playing in Wonderland leaves Alice struggling to figure it out. This scene, one of many in Alice in Wonderland, perhaps symbolizes the author’s hopeless struggle and significant concern in his quest to distinguish meaning in a world that has reduced itself to the chaos and perhaps the absurdity comparable to that of Wonderland.

Another way that Carroll intervened society into his books was by taking everyday problems and using Alice s encounters as symbols of life back then. The Bread-and-butterfly character could not survive without his weak tea and cream, a commodity not easy to obtain. Similarly, many poor Victorians faced malnutrition and serious illnesses caused by contaminated food. Deadly poisons and food shortage are issues that may have killed the Looking-Glass butterfly. On the other side of the glass, real people were suffering. Lewis Carroll challenges this personal reality in Through the Looking Glass by using the genre of fantasy. He confronts the reader indirectly through Alice. As the foreign world through the looking glass disobeys Alice’s established views, and so it disobey the reader’s views. The Hatter’s imprisonment serves as a good example of this. The Queen explains, He’s in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all. Alice does not see the sense of this because, like us, she has the reverse view of reality from the looking glass people. She dislikes the idea that someone could be punished for a crime they did not commit, but to the Queen it makes perfect sense.

This contrast of perspectives causes the reader to re-evaluate his own world, to question what he labels as unfair. On our side of the looking glass, people do occasionally get punished for something they did not do. Children are often reprimanded for a sibling’s misbehavior.