《爱丽丝奇遇记》英语读后感

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature by the British

mathematician and author, Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, written under the

pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a

rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm populated by talking playing cards and anthropomorphic

creatures.

The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends and to the lessons that

British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The Wonderland described in the tale

plays with logic in ways that has made the story of lasting popularity with children as well

as adults.

The book is often referred to by the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland. Some printings

of this title contain both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the

Looking Glass. This alternate title was popularized by the numerous film and television

adaptations of the story produced over the years.

A girl named Alice is bored while on a picnic with her older sister. She finds interest in a

passing white rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat and muttering

down a rabbit- hole, floating down into a dream underworld of paradox, the absurd and the

improbable. As she attempts to follow the rabbit, she has several misadventures. She

grows to gigantic size and shrinks to a fraction of her original height; meets a group of

small animals stranded in a sea of her own previously shed tears; gets trapped in the

rabbit's house when she enlarges herself again; meets a baby which changes into a pig,

and a cat which disappears leaving only his smile behind; goes to a never-ending tea

party; plays a bizarre variation on croquet with an anthropomorphised deck of cards; goes

to the shore and meets a Gryphon and a Mock Turtle; and finally attends the courtroom

trial of the Knave of Hearts, who has been accused of stealing some tarts. Eventually

Alice wakes up underneath a tree back with her sister.

Character allusions

The members of the boating party that first heard Carroll's tale all show up in Chapter 3

(

herself, while Carroll, or Charles Dodgson, is caricatured as the Dodo. The Duck refers to

Rev. Robinson Duckworth, the Lory to Lorina Liddell, and the Eaglet to Edith Liddell.

Bill the Lizard may be a play on the name of Benjamin Disraeli. One of Tenniel's

illustrations in Through the Looking Glass depicts a caricature of Disraeli, wearing a paper

hat, as a passenger on a train. The illustrations of the Lion and the Unicorn also bear a

striking resemblance to Tenniel's Punch illustrations of Gladstone and Disraeli.

The Hatter is most likely a reference to Theophilus Carter, a furniture dealer known in

Oxford for his unorthodox inventions. Tenniel apparently drew the Hatter to resemble

Carter, on a suggestion of Carroll's.

The Dormouse tells a story about three little sisters named Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie. These

are the Liddell sisters: Elsie is L.C. (Lorina Charlotte), Tillie is Edith (her family nickname

is Matilda), and Lacie is an anagram of Alice.

The Mock Turtle speaks of a Drawling-master,

once a week to teach

the art critic John Ruskin, who came once a week to the Liddell house to teach the

children drawing, sketching, and painting in oils. (The children did, in fact, learn well; Alice

Liddell, for one, produced a number of skilled watercolours.)

The Mock Turtle also sings

Evening, Beautiful Star,

for Lewis Carroll in the Liddell home during the same summer in which he first told the

story of Alice's Adventures Under Ground (source: the diary of Lewis Carroll, August 1,

1862 entry).

Criticism

The book, although broadly and continually received in a positive light, has also caught a

large amount of derision for its strange and random tone (which is also the reason so

many others like it). One of the best-known critics is fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who

has openly stated that he dislikes the book [1].

[edit]

Genre: fantasy or horror?

they cannot

understand them; in fact, they frequently understand them too well. Indeed they often find

the book a terrifying experience, rarely relieved by the comic spirit they can clearly

perceive.

—

Donald Rackin, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and T

hrough the Looking- Glass

Nonsense, Sense, and Meaning

The most common perspective on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is that it is a

whimsical fantasy. However, there is disagreement with this perspective. To a number of

people, the book does not characterize whim and fantasy, but rather horror and

self-sustaining Kafkesque insanity. The comedy of the book, while clearly visible, does not

mitigate the fact, but rather causes it to stand out by perverse contrast.

Taken from this perspective, the novel (as well as Through the Looking-Glass) is a sinister,

pernicious world characterized by persons who exist fully by a self-sustaining logic that