Who Was Lewis Carroll?
October 29, 2009This will be a short summary of the more interesting parts of Carroll’s life that relate to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, such as the way it was written and the true intention of the story.
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Lewis Carroll has many successful works and was quite the famous writer. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are not his only successful works. He also has some famous poems titled Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. All four of these works fall under a very peculiar literary genre according to many sources, a genre known as “literary nonsense”.
When one sees the word nonsense it seems to fit perfectly with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The book has such a playful air to it upon first glance. Of course there are underlying themes of death, but the fact that his most famous works are that of the genre “literary nonsense” seems incredibly fitting.
Something curious about Lewis Carroll is that he was chronically ill throughout his life. He was disfigured in his later years, and he was deaf in one of his ears. He also had a chronically weak chest. He is also renowned for having a stammer that he developed at an early age. Why is this significant? Because his chronically ill life could have lead to the morbid tones in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If one leads a sick life one can be unhappy. If one is unhappy, it will show through in his work, and it can be very clearly seen in Alice.
Even with these ailments Carroll was known to be a sociable and ambitious person. His abilities were not limited to writing. He was also a mathematician and an avid photographer. His photographs were often of young children, which brings me to the point that perhaps Lewis Carroll had a love for children and thus wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a book for children to enjoy.
When we combine the factors of his assumed love of children and his incredibly sick life, one can begin to understand why Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a story for children, has an underlying theme of death.
Christian Long
Katherine H.
Melissa H
Rivu D.
Alex E.
Sylvia A.
Sorry – disfigured? I’m so curious where you think you read that?
What a marvellous new little legend you may have just created! Look forward to seeing it in some future biography!
The idea of reading the book from two different points of views is very interesting. It seems that Carroll, who wrote this book for little Alice wanted to make it entertaining for a child as well as an adult. I agree with Connor partly as I believe that Carroll wrote it with an under lying mathematical references in the book with reference to death to make the writing of the book more interesting for himself and other adults, I think he didn’t write the book with references with death because he was “unhappy”. I think he wrote it like that to make the book interesting to adults and himself. Maybe my thoughts are wrong and the true answer lies in Carroll’s own personal life or his writing in general like Rivu suggests and therefore that is one thing I am also curious about going into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The reason I believe the underlying theme to be death is simply because The Annotated Alice says so. Not to mention there are few too many situations related to death for a simple childrens book. On page 13 of the Annotated Alice, on the third annotation, it says that that Alice falling down the rabbit hole is a “death joke”, and that “there are many more to come”. Also, why would such a small little girl be so paranoid of drinking something and being poisoned? Little girls are not supposed to be so incredibly paranoid about death. Falling down a rabbit hole can also be a clear metaphor for death. Another example is on page 25, where Alice says “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by drowning in my own tears!”. Then there is the queen of hearts, who has a the famous line “Off with their heads!” and who often sentences people to death.
Although there are some interesting points made here, I have to disagree on the overall message. I do not think that the underlying theme was “death.” As I have read the story, I don’t personally see his alleged “unhappiness” show through very clearly. As you said, he was a sociable and ambitious person. Personally, it doesn’t add up. It is not clear that the theme was death, I believe.