Steve Nallon's Adventures in Wonderland

The Appeal

Growing Up Among Grown-ups:
Lewis Carroll for both Adults and Children

Lewis Sketch

Lewis Carroll's own sketch of himself labelled "What I look like when I'm lecturing"

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story that enchants and excites children yet at the same time beguiles and fascinates adults. Children think it is a book for children and adults think it is a book about children for adults. What Lewis Carroll uniquely created was an adult’s view of childhood that was a child’s view of adulthood. The story of Alice is the experience of a bewildered child among bewildering grown-ups told by an adult who remembered what it was like to be bewildered. As a result Carroll’s dual perspective mystically connects with both children and adults alike. Carroll’s fable is a fantasy tale with a remarkable double-whammy impact.

Carroll’s own child view of the world never really left him. Brought up in idyllic rural surroundings and among a loving family he was always creating poems and stories and putting on plays for his many sisters and brothers. His early writing is very much a child’s view of bewildering adult authority. The poem “Rules and Regulations” which notably ends with the phrase: ‘Moral: Behave’.

Drink tea, not coffee
Never eat toffy.
Eat bread with butter.
Once more, don’t stutter.
Don’t waste your money,
Abstain from honey.
Shut doors behind you,
(Don’t slam them, mind you.)
Moral: Behave.

His Wonderland is an extension of this child fantasy world. It was an adult-dominated world and, somehow, he was able to hold on to this way of seeing the world.

Alice’s Wonderland is run by bossy, bullying grown-ups. It is a lonely place for Alice as neither Wonderland nor Through the Looking Glass has anyone of her own age with whom she can associate. No wonder children at as loss to understand the adult world find it so easy to empathise with and latch onto Alice. No wonder too that they love it when she belittles the adults in the trial scene by growing bigger (“You’re nothing but a pack of cards.”)

Yet adults also enjoy the stories because the character of Alice is so naïve. The Pigeon tells Alice she is a serpent because she eats eggs – to paraphrase Carroll the Pigeon basically says “Serpents eat eggs, you eat eggs therefore you is a serpent.” The pigeon’s logic (a classic syllogism), albeit flawed, is the sort of game that appeals to adults partly because it mystifies children.

The Lewis Carroll appeal then is to both to children who are growing up among grown-up as well as to grown-ups who can remember the growing pains of growing up.

More > > >