Literal and Figurative language in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll

     Chapter II: Literal and Figurative Language in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll

              2.1 “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”- the Most Famous and Enduring Children's Classics.

     A literary classic is a work of the highest excellence that has something important to say about life and /or the human condition and says it with great artistry. A classic, through its enduring presence, has withstood the test of time and is not bound by time, place, or customs. It speaks to us today as forcefully as it spoke to people one hundred or more years ago, and as forcefully as it will speak to people of future generations. For this reason, a classic is said to have universality.

The novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll is full of whimsical charm, and a feeling for the absurd that is unsurpassed. It is filled with allusions to Dodgson’s friends and enemies, and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize.

     Lewis Carroll's book “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” was not originally written for the general public but for a single child: Alice Pleasance Liddell, second daughter of the Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford. The story of its composition, as Carroll recorded it in the prefatory verses to “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, goes something like this: On a warm summer afternoon (July 4, 1862, according to Carroll's diary) the author, his friend Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and the three young Liddell sisters (Lorina Charlotte, age thirteen, Alice Pleasance, age ten, and Edith, age eight), daughters of the Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford, made a short trip up the Thames River in a rowboat.

     According to an account written many years later by Alice Liddell, she pestered Carroll—the pseudonym for mathematician and dean Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—to write the story down for her. Between the time that Carroll began work on the manuscript and the time that he completed it, he had lost the friendship of the Liddells. He had also shown the manuscript to his friends Mr. and Mrs. George MacDonald, who read it to their children and urged Carroll to publish the story. The first edition of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” was published in June of 1865. This early, flawed edition of the novel is now considered one of the rarest books in the world and commands huge prices among collectors.

     In this children’s classic, a girl named Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm full of talking creatures. She attends a never-ending tea party and plays croquet at the court of the anthropomorphic playing cards.

     Throughout the course of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Alice goes through a variety of absurd physical changes. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration, and sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a comfortable physical size.

     The tale plays with logic in ways that have made the story of lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the most characteristic examples of the genre of literary nonsense, and its narrative course and structure has been enormously influential, mainly in the fantasy genre.        

     In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no clear solutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations. Alice expects that the situations she encounters will make a certain kind of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability to figure out Wonderland. Alice tries to understand the Caucus race, solve the Mad Hatter’s riddle, and understand the Queen’s ridiculous croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles and challenges presented to Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic. Alice learns that she cannot expect to find logic or meaning in the situations that she encounters, even when they appear to be problems, riddles, or games that would normally have solutions that Alice would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about the ways that life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even when problems seem familiar or solvable. So the tension of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” emerges when Alice’s fixed perspective of the world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. Alice’s fixed sense of order clashes with the madness she finds in Wonderland. The White Rabbit challenges her perceptions of class when he mistakes her for a servant, while the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Pigeon challenge Alice’s notions of urbane intelligence with an unfamiliar logic that only makes sense within the context of Wonderland. Most significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good manners by constantly assaulting her with dismissive rudeness. Alice’s fundamental beliefs face challenges at every turn, and as a result Alice suffers an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as she perceives her sense of order collapsing all around her. Alice must choose between retaining her notions of order and assimilating into Wonderland’s nonsensical rules.

     Thus, almost ironically, the so-called nonsense writer's achievements are timeless and unchallengeable, and the fame of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” endures. To fully appreciate “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, one must keep in mind that the whole is simpler than its parts, and that although it was written originally for children, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has become a favorite adult piece of literature, a critical and philosophical work, and rich in multiple meanings. Inspired by the book's success, Carroll began the work on a sequel, “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There”, published in 1872. The two Alice books remain in print today, over a century after their publication. They remain, next to the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, among the world's most widely translated works of literature.

     More scholars (particularly economists and mathematicians) seem to allude to the Alice books with each passing day. The broad appeal of Alice, then, certainly lends substance to the notion that Alice and the novel are, ultimately, what you make of them. But there is some question as to whether children enjoy the puzzlement found in the story's episodes more than the story itself. In any case, children do not need critical information to appreciate Alice. The philosophical allusions and psychological implications are for adult tastes.

   “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is a wonderful book with which to take a brief respite from our over-rational and sometimes dreary world. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     2.2 Figurative Language in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.

     Imagery in Lewis Carroll's classic book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - like the imagery in all great literature - is richly woven into the fabric of the story, and makes the story come to life in ways that spark the imagination of the reader. Imagery in this book brings the plot into focus and greatly enhances Alice's narrative. And though it is a cliche, it is true in this work that “things are not always what they appear to be...” That's part of the fun, and the adventure of Alice. This is what happens continuously in Carroll’s text. Alice is usually the one who stares and gapes while all the other creatures seem perfectly at ease in that linguistic nonsensical wonderland. The dream context creates an alternative reality in which common sense references are constantly challenged and figurative meanings are often taken literally, producing ludicrous situations and funny altercations between Alice and the many creatures she encounters.

     The poem in the beginning of the book describes the circumstances of the day the story was created. Carroll and Duckworth were rowing the boat down the river. The three sisters asked Carroll to tell them a story.  The oldest daughter, Lorina, told him “to begin it”. The middle child, Alice, demanded “there be nonsense in it ”. Edith, the youngest kept interrupting while the story was being told "not more than once a minute." It should be mentioned that the imagery and the figurativeness starts with this poem. The author uses many figures of speech to show the circumstances that lead to the creation of the book. For example the use of numerals instead of the names of the girls:  Lorina- “prima”, Alice- “secunda”, Edith, the youngest –“tertia”. This is not the only substitution; the author uses  two synechdoches in the second stanza:

     “Yet what can a poor voice avail

     Against three tongues together?”

     The first example is ‘voice’ which stands for the story-teller in the poem and the second example is ‘tongues’ that stands for the three girls.

     The author uses also two nice epithets that describe the beauty of the nature: “All in the golden afternoon”, and “Beneath such dreamy weather”.

     The adjectives golden and dreamy are used figuratively, meaning “warm with much sun” and respectively “beautiful, wonderful”. A literal usage of the language here will not touch so the sole of the reader, as does it the two epithets.

     Example of epithet in the works of other English writers:

     “The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.”(James Joyce, Ulysses)

     Carroll created a wonderland through which a "dream-child" wandered and her experiences there. He tired of telling the story, telling the girls he would finish it next time they were together.  They insisted that he continue, thereby creating the “tale of Wonderland.” 

     Alice Liddell was favored by Lewis Carroll, which is why she became the main character of the story. 

     After a short verse prologue, in which he commemorates the day on which he first told his tale, Lewis Carroll begins “ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” with a familiar episode: Alice is sitting by the bank of a stream, bored, when she notices the White Rabbit dressed in a waistcoat scurrying along. The rabbit stops to pull a pocket watch out of its waistcoat pocket, mutters to itself that it will be late for something, then scurries off and disappears down a hole. Alice follows the rabbit down the hole, and suddenly finds herself falling.

     Alice is falling, but slowly, very slowly; she has the time to pick up a jar of "Orange Marmalade" from a shelf, and the image of her slowly, painfully slow-motion-like, observing and then plucking a jar of jelly from a cupboard which also had maps (foreshadowing that she would be traveling somewhere mysterious perhaps?) paints a strong picture in the mind of the reader. But the fact that there is nothing in the jar, is disappointing, and one can sense that this may be a foreshadowing of how much of the book will go; that is, confusion, deception, the problem of time (the rabbit's watch shows that he is late) - and of course, of reality vs. fantasy.

     Here the slowness of the fall of Alice which is accentuated by a several time used repetition: “Down, down, down.”, comes in opposition with the hurry of the White Rabbit, which make  the tale look as  a big antithesis expressed through the actions of the main characters.

     Among other English writers who have made the most abundant use of antithesis are Pope, Young, Johnson, and Gibbon. The familiar phrase “Man proposes: God disposes” is an example of antithesis, as is John Dryden's description in The Hind and the Panther: “Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell.”

     The author creates words and expressions and even invents new meanings for words. Alice's exclamation  “Curiouser and curiouser!” encompasses the idea that both her surrounds and the words she uses to describe them are far from ordinary. It is so effective because it is both unexpected and unusual. But even after a sense of the pattern is established, the perceptive use continues to surprise. This method pushes readers to examine the use of language and articulation. Anything is possible in Wonderland, and Carroll's manipulation of language reflects this sense of unlimited possibility. The pun on “curious” defines Alice's fluctuating personality.  Her eagerness to know and to be right, her compulsive reciting of her lessons (“I'm  sure  I can't  be Mabel,  for  I know  all sorts  of things”)  turn  inside out  into  the  bizarre anarchy of  her dream country, as  the  lessons themselves  turn inside out  into strange and savage tales of  animals eating  each other.  In both senses of the word, Alice becomes “Curiouser and curiouser!” as she moves more  deeply  into Wonderland;  she  is both the croquet game without rules and its violent arbiter,  the Queen of Hearts.  The  sea  that  almost  drowns  her  is  composed  of  her  own tears,(“I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!”- an irony (turning into paradox expressed in a hyperbolic way; these are the main features of the Wonderland, things are exaggerated and uncommon) that are   and  the  dream  that  nearly  obliterates  her  is  composed  of  fragments  of her own  personality.

       Let us see some two examples of paradox taken from other literary works:

     “The child is father to the man.”    (W. Wordsworth)

     And

       “You always hurt the one you love.”   (popular song)

     Logically the child can not be father to an adult. But there are situations in life when children are more correct and behave better than do adults in similar situations. That is why the author used this truth from life and made up a nice successful figure of speech. The same is about the second paradox taken from a popular song: very often people hurt those whom they love.

     In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” things are exaggerated in the expression “When pigs will fly”. It is an idiom that is apparently derived from a century-old Scottish proverb, though some other references to pigs flying or pigs with wings are more famous. At least one appears in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”:

“ ‘Thinking again?’ the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. 
‘I've a right to think,’ said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. 
‘Just about as much right,’ said the Duchess, ‘as pigs have to fly....’”

This is an adynaton which is a figure of speech in the form of hyperbole taken to such extreme lengths as to suggest a complete impossibility.

     Carroll was particularly adept with the malleability of language, as seen in his constant use of puns, one of which is appears in this philosophical discussion. Carroll puns on the “richness” of language as Humpty Dumpty says “When I make a word do a lot of work like that…I always pay it extra.”

     To make a pun is to exploit double meanings of a word for humorous purposes or effects. Sometimes the play is on different senses of the same word; sometimes it is on the similar sense or sound of different words.

     In the “A Caucus-Race and the Long Tale” Carroll uses an interesting pun on the word tale:

     “ ‘You promised to tell me your history, you know,’ said Alice, ‘and why it is you hate—C and D,’ she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again.

‘Mine is a long and a sad tale!’ said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

‘It IS a long tail, certainly,’ said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; ‘but why do you call it sad?’”

      “The Mouse's Tale” is a concrete poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his novel “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the novel, the chapter title refers to “A Long Tale” and the Mouse introduces it by saying, “Mine is a long and sad tale!” Alice thinks the Mouse means its tail, which makes her imagine the poem in its twisted, tail-like shape:

       “ ‘Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, ‘Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you. —Come, I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I’ve nothing to do.’ Said the mouse to the cur, ‘Such a trial, dear Sir,With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.’ ‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury: ‘I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.’”(In Carroll’s work the tale has the form of a tail.)

       In the “Mock Turtle’s Story” episode we have two puns:

  “ ‘When we were little,’ the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, ‘we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle – we used to call him Tortoise –’

    ‘Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?’ Alice asked.

    ‘We  called  him  Tortoise because he  taught us,’ said the Mock Turtle angrily: ‘really you are very dull!’

    ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,’ added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.”

     This simple excerpt of conversation reveals effectively the two types of pun previously described. The first one revolves around the exploitation of different meanings of the word ‘school’. Alice’s world of references immediately leads her to think of ‘school’ as a place where children go everyday, hopefully to learn lots of interesting subjects guided by their teachers. Still, a turtle’s home is the sea and

‘school’ also stands for a group of fishes or whales swimming together. 

      The  second  example  explores  the  sound  similarities between the word ‘Tortoise’ and the phrase ‘taught us’. As far as the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon can see, following the implicit rules of sense is quite a tedious practice. They rather follow some sound reasoning of their own. If the Master Turtle taught us, then it becomes a Tortoise even though it does not belong to the terrestrial turtle family at all. The important thing is the sound resemblance between words and not their actual meanings or their accurate application to the context.

       Other examples of this concurrence of different semantic fields include the pairs ‘lessons’ / ‘lessen’, which can be found in this same chapter:

  “ ‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

    ‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Mock Turtle; ‘nine the next, and so on.’

    ‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

    ‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’  

    This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she

made her next remark. ‘Then the eleventh day must be a holiday?’ 

    ‘Of course it was,’ said the Mock Turtle.

    ‘And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly.

    ‘That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: ‘tell her something about the games now.’”

   The idea that lessons are named so because they lessen, that is because they become shorter, from day to day, puzzles Alice. Again, the sound resemblance between the words is taken for granted by the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle who keep following an illogical logic. Still, this time Alice is able to interrogate their logic by posing some difficult questions. Indeed, when she seems intrigued about the 12^th day, they aren’t able to come up with a proper explanation and therefore they simply change the subject to games and songs.

     Changing the subject is, furthermore, a quite recurrent expedient in Carroll’s text. Just as much as putting an end to the conversation by throwing in a sulky reply, as Alice had done in “The Mad Tea-Party”, and as we shall see in the subsequent quote: 

  “‘If I’d been the whiting,’ said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, ‘I’d have said to the porpoise, “Keep back, please: we don’t want you with us!”’