Lewis Caroll Essays - Alice In Wonderland, Kingdom Hearts Characters

Lewis Caroll After hundreds of publications, films, and stage plays, some scholars have begun to fear that Alice has become cold and monumental , like a classic tomb say Gilbert K. Chesterton, of the novel(Gardener,1960). The Adventures of Alice In Wonderland is no longer a light, fun book of nonsense, but now, more than ever, just a required reading for most high school students. The truth is that Lewis Carrolls humorous antics are not quite as senseless as they may seem to the average, American teenager. Much of his complicated nonsense was meant only to be understood by the residents of Oxford, and others only by the three daughters of Henry George Liddle. Carrolls physical appearance is described as handsome, but somewhat lopsided. His smile was a little crooked, one shoulder was a little higher than the other, and his eyes were different shades of blue. He was also plagued with a slight speech impediment, and later on acquired deafness in one ear. The company of three of his favorite child-friends, Lorina Charlotte, Alice Pleasance, and Edith Liddell, was something Carroll held very dear to him. He enjoyed entertaining little girls with such things as word puzzles, game, and, his most praise-worthy, tempting their thirst for fantesy with fairy tale-like adventure stories. He was quite partial to small girls, but young boys replused him. This could prehaps be the reason why it was a little boy he turned into a pig in chapter six. Little Alice Pleasance is said to be the basis for Carrolls character Alice in the well known childrens series. He created the story of Alice and Wonderland while on a boat ride with the three sisters. The ride was to start at Follys Bridge and end at the village of Godstow(Comer,1998). On the way Carroll tickled the girls imaginations with exciting tales of adventure and wonder in a place he called Wonderland, as he did with many children that he befriended. He makes many references to the three girls in the Alice books, using their last name as a play on words by calling them the three little girls. He would often disguised their first names by calling them Elise, Tillie, Lacie. Elise for L.C. (Lorina Charlotte), Tillie came from Ediths nickname, Matilda, and the rearranging the letters in Alice can result in Lacie. When he talked of himself he would use the name Dodo, because, with his stammered he pronounced his given name(Charles LIdwig Dodgeson) Do-Do-Dogdeson. He would often keep in touch with the children as they grew older, by way of mail. He would write to them and they would write back. In fact, the only reason why Carroll got The Adventures of Alice In Wonderland published was because of a suggestion from Alice Liddell , in one of her letters. Carroll suffered from a slight stutter, and he tended to be shy and with- drawn in the company of adults, but given the opportunity to converse with a child, he would open up. He was able to be himself, maybe, because the children didnt seem to notice that his physical features werent perfectly symmetrical, or that he walked with a hobble, nor did they care. He never talked down to a child, and he never doubted their intelligence, to him they were the greatest of equals. Lewis Carroll changed the way the world views childrens literature. In the Victorian time period it was common for a childrens author to pack their literature with page, after page of devout morals. However, with the publication of Carrolls The Adventures of Alice In Wonderland in 1865, he single-handedly turned Victorian moralism upside-down. Up until that time, all childrens books had tried to teach kids too much a little too soon. The books tended to speak down to children, in an attempt to moralized them, so that as they grew older they would know how to maintain, what they considered, proper public decorum. Not many authors of that time knew what Carroll had learned early on, that what children really wanted was something to get their imaginations working. Those poor children had heard the same stories of little girls and boys suffering , because they didnt follow the rules they had been taught, time and time again. They needed someone