The Book Review of “Alice'
The Book Review of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”
--15级旅游学院 国旅班 陈文瀚 15330021
This book was written by Lewis Carroll,a math teacher who did not get married through his whole life.Carroll wrote this story at his 30s.The protagonist in this story,Alice,was a little girl whose prototype was Carroll’s little neighbor.He loved his neighbor’s 7-year-old daughter,so he portrayed a little girl who had the similar characteristics as her in his story.Carroll became famous all over the world because of this wonderful and fantastic story book,making him also be named as “the father of modern fairy tales”.
This story was used to not only provide fun for the readers,but also reflect the social situation where the author lived in.Carroll used this story to make a sarcastic criticism to the dark aspect of the society.Although this is a fairy tale,but the characters in this story were the symbols of many people with some typical characteristics,which represented some phenomenon in the social environment.At the same time,this is also a very good fairy tale and a modern one,comparing to some other famous ones like “Andersen's Fairy Tales” and “Aesop's Fables”.It is full of fancy scenes and funny dialogues,making nearly all children even a large amounts of adults can not help finishing the terrific story.The publish of this book was a milestone of human’s fairy tales,because it created a new era of modern fairy tales.
As far as I am concerned,the author did a great job to get his intended audiences’ attention.Why I hold this opinion is because people who read this fairy tale can easily fit into the plot and have the same experience as the protagonist.Readers can also find out the implicit meaning or connotation of the story if they read it carefully and think about the characteristics of the characters in the story when they are reading it. To the children,the little readers,who can not easily and really know about the implicit and ironic meaning in it,can also be intoxicated in the wonderful and marvelous plots of the story.I think the author was very smart because he portrayed a little girl as his story’s protagonist but not a woman or a man.That is to say,the leading character of this fairy tale is just like most of its readers,a child with all the typical disposition and thoughts and behaviors as a kid at that time.For this reason,children can easily understand Alice’s thoughts and sayings and behaviors just like themselves.It can attract many little readers and let them “go into the wonderland” with Alice.Moreover,the plots of this fairy tale are very interesting and novel,making a huge charm to all the readers.
The story was about a little girl named Alice who went into a wonderland and saw many interesting and incredible scenes.She met some animals who could speak and think just like human beings and they had some unique characteristics or abilities which others did not have.As the plot developed,Alice met The King of Hearts and The Queen of Hearts,who had totally different disposition and thoughts.The highlight part of this story was the trial in the court,where Alice had a heated debate and argument with The Queen of Hearts to justify that the defendant was innocent.When she eventually knew that she had grown up to be a mature lady and known who she was,she suddenly woke up and found that it was just a daydream.
After analyzing this meaningful story,I think that the author’s writing style was technical and descriptive.We can see that in this story,the author used many beautiful sentences and words to describe the wonderland and the inner thoughts of all the characters.He portrayed the different characters with different disposition,which made the images of all the characters were clear and unique.In addition,the sayings of the characters also had some implicit meanings or philosophical function.For example,the caterpillar who was always smoking and repeating the same sentence to Alice,asked Alice to answer his question,“Who was she”.This is a very simple sentence but has a implicit connotation.In an other word,this question was used to make Alice to reflect herself and find out her own characteristics and identity in the mysterious as well as confusing wonderland.He hoped Alice could grow up from a childish girl to a mature lady and not get lost in her experience and the surrounding environment.The author used just a simple sentence to express so much philosophical meanings,which made this story be filled with the charm of deep thoughts.Furthermore,the author also used much specific description to show us the scenes.When Alice was taking to the other characters,the author would add some sentences to make a dialogue and the words in these sentences were the oral and informal ones,making the talks between Alice and others lively.When there were no dialogues,the author would use some descriptive and rhetorical words to describe the environment or the atmosphere of the wonderland.When Alice was thinking about something,the author also wrote a monologue to show Alice’s inner thoughts.Generally speaking,the author used his lively words and sentences to make us successfully be absorbed in the plots and could not put down the book.
One of the factors which develop the plots is the comparison of Alice herself when she experienced the whole journey to the wonderland and the other characters about their distinct thoughts and disposition.Take The Queen of Hearts and the The King of Hearts as an example.Although they were husband and wife in the story,they did not have the similar thoughts and we can even say that they were totally different.The Queen of Hearts was a cruel and cold-blood shrew while The King of Hearts was a gentle and kind person.The Queen of Hearts always said“Beheaded!”which made many animals in the wonderland was afraid of her.But Alice did not afraid of her so she could have the courage to argue with her at the court and justified the defendant for his innocence.Another example was the changes of Alice both in psychology and mental.At first,she was so curious about the wonderland and every creature she met.When she faced some difficulties,she just cried and did not find any ways to solve the problems by herself.At the same time,she was very childish and could not find out her own identity in the confusing wonderland.However,when she experienced more,met more characters and learned more about life and the world,she gradually became a mature lady and had her own thinking.She had her own values and attitudes towards the incidents happening around her,which made her justified the defendant’s innocence even if The Queen of Hearts was very angry about her behaviors.She could help the three gardeners escape from being killed by The Queen of Hearts.It showed that Alice had grown up psychologically and mentally,which means that she could help others with her own efforts but not just cried and asked others to help her deal with the difficulties.
Another factor which strongly and deeply developed the theme of the story was the usage of metaphor.For instance,there was a mysterious and weird cat who could make any part of his body vanish and appear suddenly.When The Queen of Hearts ordered her subordinates to move off the cat’s head,the weird and naughty cat made his body disappeared,with only his head in the air.This was not only an ordinary scene that can attract readers’ eyes and rise their interests,but also a scene with metaphorical function.The cat had no body,so The Queen of Hearts could not move off his head,which was very sarcastic.Another example was that Alice was afraid of reciting articles and a mouse was always showing his historic knowledge to others even though he did not know anything about history.The mouse’s stupid behavior of showing his knowledge which he just recited it before but did not understand it also had a ironical meaning.It seemed to show a very common phenomena in the society at the author’s time--people just recited their textbooks and regarded it as a most useful way of learning.They could not really understand the specific and precise meaning of the knowledge they learned,but just stupidly recited them.That is to say,people actually did not learn anything from the textbooks.Schools only taught the students to recite the knowledge without thinking and understanding.It was a typical phenomena showing the rigid and obsolete educational systems at that time.This was a bad phenomena existing in the society,affecting all the citizens in Britain during that period.Furthermore,the brutal image of The Queen of Hearts also had a metaphorical meaning.The author used this shrew to taunt the cruel and strict governor at that time like Queen Victoria or Queen Margaret.Apart from all the examples I mentioned above,there was a very common writing style in the whole story--relativity within many concepts.For instance,when Alice drank something and then became small,she would be so small that she can not get the key on the table.When Alice did something that made her get larger,she was so large that a house could not contained her whole body.When a dog told Alice that shaking tails and roaring meant anger,a cat told her that shaking tails and roaring meant kindness and happiness.All this opposite concepts told us that many things in this world could not be well understand unless you compared the relativity of two opposite things.Lastly,the author also used some scenes to show the unsteady of the society and the changeable factors of our lives.For example,when Alice ate an mushroom,she would grow larger if she ate the left part of it while she would became small if she ate the right part of it.It was so incredible that the same mushroom could have totally different function.It seemed to tell readers that our world was the same as the mushroom.We thought that our lives would be steady and without any uncertain factors,but actually we ignored the uncertainty of our changing world.People who owned a lot of money and had a high reputation and fame in the society could lose all his money and social status overnight.A poor farmer could also became a billionaire after one day just because he got the lottery money with his good luck.Many things seemed to be steady and quiet actually concealed the unsteady and turbulent aspect.So we can see,the easy words could contain a lot of philosophical connotation,this is why this story could spread all over the world swiftly and conquered readers’ hearts.
In conclusion,this book had many strengths in expressing the author’s thoughts and attitudes towards the society.The usages of sarcastic and metaphorical sentences and scenes,the lively descriptions of characters’ inner thoughts,behaviors,dialogues and the atmosphere or the environment,and the comparison in this fairy tale,all these skills could help convey the thoughts and implicit meanings of the author and let the intended readers know the intention of writing this story.Its fancy and wonderful description made readers have a deep impression on it.At the same time,the implicit meanings of the sentences and words made people think thoroughly about their society situation,offering them a chance to know the world they lived in from a totally different angle.Only by looking at the world from a different or opposite way could human beings truly feel the complexity of the world.It urged them to renew their concepts and take some effects to change the world to be a better one.It was a extremely important and vital process in the development of human beings and the society. So I think this is why this fairy tale would have such a high status in the history of fairy stories and the author became so famous after publishing this wonderful story.I think the author’s life was a good example to show his point that everything in the world was changing at any moment,criminals could be good guys and the opposite was also probable.He let the people in this world learn much more thing not only just the fun in the plots but more impressive philosophical thoughts.
Totally speaking,I loved this fantastic fairy tale so much.The plots are very interesting and give me a deep impression.The characteristics of Alice are very typical for a kid that almost all of them I had in my childhood.The author used this to get the agreement on his points.He successfully created a lively girl even if he had no daughter in his whole life.The fancy stories told by the characters in this fairy tale also very fun.I appreciate the author’s terrific imagination so much because he was just a math teacher like many other counterparts in the world.His overwhelming imagination made me deeply intoxicated in such a interesting story and can not help finishing it.Besides,the connotation in every words and sentences and scenes is also the reason why I like it so much.Unlike many fairy tales,it has many impressive philosophical meaning towards life.When I read this story,I can renew my notion to this world,to the people around me.It gives me a chance to analyze the phenomenon in this familiar society from a unique angle,so I can see many things that I can not see before.It is these two things that let me fall in love with this marvelous story.
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