University of Iceland

School of Humanities

Department of English

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Literary Nonsense

A Deconstructive Analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Novel

B. A. Essay

Lara Ruiz Prados

Kt.: 271184-4339

Supervisor: Anna Heiða Pálsdóttir

January 2018
 ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes the main features of the nonsense genre, including its definition, characteristics
and, especially, its relevance in the world of literature. Nonsense literature encourages the
imagination of the reader, whether child or adult, and, at the same time, it motivates the use of the
reader’s wisdom to make it even greater. It is not necessary to find out the intention of the writer
while he or she was creating the book. The reader must interpret the text according to his own
circumstances. Without any doubt, and according to Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), a critical reading
must create a text because “there is nothing outside of the text.”

Furthermore, the essay offers a deconstructive analysis of nonsense books by the well-
known mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), who used to sign his novels with
his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Particularly, the essay focuses its investigation on Carroll’s books
about the unforgettable character of Alice, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Indeed, Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland has been one of the world’s most frequently translated works and, after Shakespeare,
Carroll is possibly the world’s most quoted author. The famous books about Alice were not
expressly written for children; it is needless to say that also adults enjoy Carroll’s unsolved logic
problems.

Additionally, this essay contains an analysis of Carroll’s logic problems and their utility to
understand further how the current world works, for example, through the understanding of physical
laws. After reading a nonsense text by Carroll, the reader goes ahead rationally in order to discover
and solve what is beyond the monotonous axioms in which we are used to live. But there is more:
Carroll’s use of English is excellent, and his creation of coined words makes his texts even more
authentic.
 “I’m not myself...”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1

2. The Nonsense Genre ................................................................................................. 4

3. Carroll’s Choice and Application of the Nonsense Genre ........................................ 9

4. The Nonsense Genre expressed through Characters and Symbolism ....................... 14

5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 19

Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 21

1. Introduction

The purpose of this thesis is to explain the relevance and meaning of literary nonsense genre
and how Lewis Carroll used this genre in his works Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). At the same time,
there will be provided examples of those “unsolved” problems that Carroll mentioned in his
texts. Recognizing the meaning of nonsense games or problems is not an easy task, and this
thesis is meant to analyze them, explaining their significance and intention. Correspondingly
with those ideas, a nonsense text leads the reader to improve his or her shrewdness to interpret
the text and, at the same time, the reader will advance intellectually beyond the boring axioms
where we are used to live in. Lewis Carroll used many complex and convoluted logic
problems in his texts, thus, his texts are an excellent example to escape from those axioms.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (from now on, Lewis Carroll) was born on the 27th of
January, 1832, in the village of Daresbury, Cheshire, England. He is better known by his pen
name, Lewis Carroll. This pseudonym was used for the first time in his work The Train,
published in March, 1856 (Lennon 11). He had three brothers and seven sisters, and all of
them survived into adulthood. When Lewis Carroll was eleven, he and his family moved to
Croft-on-Tees, a village in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, also in England
(Douglas-Fairhurst 28). He was a Reverend, logician, mathematician, photographer and
British writer and, indeed, he was a lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, for many years
(Lennon 13). He died on the 14th of January, 1898, at his sisters’ home in Guildford, a large
city in Surrey, England (12).

Many changes were happening in England during the years that Lewis Carroll was
alive. He lived almost all his life during the Victorian Era. The reign of the Queen Victoria
lasted from the 20th of June, 1837, until her death, on the 22th of January, 1901. This period
of time in the history of England was marked by the big expansion of the British Empire
(Pollard 199). Moreover, the Victorian Era was characterized by the Revolution of 1846
(Halevy 103) and the European Revolution in 1848 (236). The Victorian Era was a
remarkable period of important changes, including social and economic developments
together with technological innovations.

The young Carroll began his education in his own house and ever since he was a little
boy, he developed a strong interest in mathematics (Moses 8). In 1851, young Lewis Carroll
became a Student of Christ Church at Oxford University. He was not nineteen years old yet,

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and “from that time to the day of his death his name was always associated with the fine old
building which was his Alma Mater” (42). Lewis Carroll graduated in 1854, obtaining the
degree of Bachelor of Arts. Three years after, in 1857, he became a Master of Arts at the
University of Oxford (54).

Once Lewis Carroll finished his studies at Oxford, he became a teacher at Oxford
University. Then, while he was teaching, he wrote his famous books about Alice, Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865), commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland (Douglas-
Fairhurst 3), and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Both
books are considered as “part of the background of every educated Englishman and
American” (Phillips ixx). Alice in Wonderland has been one of the “world’s most frequently
translated works” (Guiliano xi), actually, it has been translated in more than fifty-five
languages. After Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll is possibly “the world’s most quoted author”
(Phillips ixx). Alice in Wonderland became so popular at the time that Lewis Carroll had to
write a second part a few years after.

Both Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear (1812-1888), two Victorian writers, were
“responsible for the development of an innovative and intelligent literature for children”
(Lemos 24). However, thinking that Alice in Wonderland was the first book that Lewis
Carroll wrote for children is “a great mistake” in the words of Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
(1). Carroll already wrote some pieces of work to entertain his siblings when he was just a
little boy. After that, he did not stop writing. Lewis Carroll wrote other great works, for
instance, The Hunting of the Snark (1876), The Game of Logic (1887), Sylvie and Bruno
(published in 1889) and Symbolic Logic (1896). All of them were addressed to a “wide
general audience and, quite explicitly, to children” (Bartley 5). But, even though Carroll’s
texts were written to please children, it does not mean that those works are not interesting for
adults. Logical puzzles, symbolism and philosophical question are a key part of his work.

In order to analyze and arrange all these ideas, this thesis is divided into four chapters.
To begin with, the following chapter introduces and explains the concept of the literary
nonsense genre according to some authors and critics. Once the concept of literary nonsense
has been examined, a different chapter analyzes deeper the application of literary nonsense
and explains the connection between that concept and the works of Lewis Carroll, disclosing,
meantime, the application of Carroll’s knowledge in logic and mathematics into his nonsense
works Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice
Found There. The third chapter goes into more details of Lewis Carroll’s works, hence, it

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develops the nonsense genre expressed through characters and symbolism in Carroll’s books
about Alice. The conclusion restates the main argument and recapitulates the thesis of the
essay and the main ideas which support the argument.

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2. The Nonsense Genre

The term “nonsense” is a “relatively recent phenomenon in literature, originating in Britain in

the Romantic and post-Romantic era” (Tigges 3). According to Holbrook Jackson, “the
literature of nonsense has grown in quality as well as quantity” during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries (ix) and, still today, nonsense literature is growing, as we can find many
new writers who are fans of this genre. Despite the abandonment of sense, the Victorian
public did enjoy the hilarious rhymes, pictures and texts of different nonsense writers, and
even today, readers still appreciate these nonsense texts.

Defining the concept of “nonsense” is not an easy task. There have been some
attempts but, in fact, there is not a “clear theoretical consensus” (Tigges 1). Anyhow, there are
many writers who are defined as “nonsense writers”, sometimes by themselves and sometimes
by others. For instance, three of these nonsense writers are Edward Lear who wrote the Book
of Nonsense (1846), Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland (1865), and the famous
musician John Lennon, who wrote a nonsensical book called In His Own Write (1964). These
works share some characteristics of the literary nonsense genre and, even though there is not a
consensus of the meaning of nonsense, it is possible to describe and analyze those aspects.

A definition of “nonsense” is a number of “words conveying absurd or ridiculous

ideas” and a second definition is nonsense as a “language without meaning” (Tigges 9). This
definition means that, on the one hand, it is possible to find a text classified as a nonsense text
if it is composed of ideas without any sense in the real life, for example, “you are not
yourself” or “drive faster, so you’ll stay at the same place.” On the other hand, a nonsense text
could consist of ideas with no meaning, using words that do not exist, for instance,
“tomorrow, there will be a biliadous cake for the cuvudaley party.”

According to the first definition, a nonsense text which uses some ridiculous ideas
results in a text which will make the reader think about why what is written in the text is not
logical or why the meaning of it is ridiculous. For example, if the text states “you are not
yourself,” the reader will try to understand why that idea is absurd: can you not be yourself?
What happens when you die, are you yourself or not? Clearly, a nonsense text based on this
definition will make the reader think further about the sense of reality than a text which
entails some, or more, “sense”.

Furthermore, it is possible that, after reading a nonsense text, the reader will learn
more about reality than after reading a “sense text” or a text which is not classified as a

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nonsense text. Reading romantic stories is excellent for entertainment, but everybody knows
how love works or, at least, most people can experience love in their real lives. But nonsense
tales go further than that. The reader of a nonsense text must understand reality and also the
logic of the real world. That is to say, how reality works. It is easy to understand what we see
everyday, such as the day and the night or how a seed becomes a flower, without even
thinking much about it. Being more accurate, these quotidians facts are recorded in our brains
as axioms in our regular days. But a reader of a nonsense text must understand further,
thinking about the logic of the real world and, at the same time, about the world beyond it, the
one that we do not see or experience every day.

Regarding the second definition, a text composed of language with no meaning using,
for instance, coined words, will make, consequently, the imagination and ingenuity of the
reader flow even more than reading other types of texts. Using the previous example,
“tomorrow, there will be a biliadous cake for the cuvudaley party,” the reader should consider
all the possibilities to be able to understand the meaning of “biliadous” or “cuvudaley”. After
connecting that specific nonsense phrase with the later ones which are written along the text,
the reader will obtain one or more conclusions about the spirit of the text. Or maybe not.

Nonsense literature is always open to the reader’s imagination and it is very pleasing
to have the opportunity to read texts that are created to develop the creativity and wisdom of
the reader. Texts should not be exclusively to describe reality, because the art of creating
literature does not work like other subjects, for instance mathematics.

In addition, a language, such as English, is always in continuous progress, enriching

itself with new words. It is well known that Shakespeare introduced many new words to the
English language through his texts. Sometimes, those words had already been used in oral
language, but they were never written before. However, in other cases, Shakespeare just
invented new words, for example, by creating a new noun from an existing verb.
Consequently, “coinages were an important component of the persistent belief that
Shakespeare’s vocabulary dwarfed all others in size, variety, and creativity” (Ward 49).

Together with the previous ideas, many readers could think that a text has no value if
the reader does not recognize the message, or thoughts, that the author meant to express with
the text. Other readers, in the meantime, could assume that there is no reason to read a text if
they do not find out the author’s ideas, or purpose.

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 According to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), one of the major
theorists associated with post-structuralism, a critical reading must create a text because
“there is nothing outside of the text” (Barry 66). Derrida explains in Of Grammatology:

The writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper systems, laws,
and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. He uses
them by only letting himself, after a fashion and up to a point, be governed
by the system. And the reading must always aim at a certain relationship,
unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does
not command of the patterns of the language that he uses. This relationship
is not a certain quantitative distribution of shadow and light, of weakness or
of force but a signifying structure that critical reading should produce. (158)

Peter Barry explains Derrida’s somewhat complex idea. Derrida means that the reader should
deconstruct a text instead of reconstruct it, so the reader must build up his or her own version
of what is written in the text. Consequently:

“Reading and interpretation, then, are not just reproducing what the writer
thought and expressed in the text. This inadequate notion of interpretation
Derrida calls a ‘doubling commentary’, since it tries to reconstruct a pre-
existing, non-textual reality (of what the writer did or thought) to lay
alongside the text.” (Barry 67)

On the one hand, the messages or ideas written in the text could be many, and it is the reader’s
task to uncover them while reading it. It is not essential that the reader discover the point of
view of the author; it is enough that the reader enhances his own knowledge through the
reading of the new text by building his or her own conclusions. On the second hand, the
purpose of nonsense authors could be many. Firstly, to make the reader think about the logic
of the tangible world, or even the absence of logic in it, and consider the significance of the
abstract world. Secondly, the intention could be to entertain the reader with new ideas, such as
weird concepts, hilarious theories or using bizarre pictures. Thirdly, the author perhaps simply
wants to write a text due to a personal purpose, without thinking of the reader in particular,
expressing his thoughts or getting some income. Most of the time, the reader does not know
the author’s reasons for writing a new book unless he or she read an interview with him
explaining those reasons and, anyhow, what the writer says in the interview could not be even
true. And, indeed, there are no differences between nonsense authors and the others. Does the

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reader really know the purpose of those authors of texts which are not classified as “nonsense
texts”? After all, these conclusions could be extrapolated to all types of writers.

Going further from the previous ideas, nonsense texts use common language. And
language is “a rule-governed communication system”. A communication system is “a system
that people use to exchange information to each other”, and to be able to exchange
information, there should be common rules that all those people who want to communicate
must know and dominate. In brief, “when a system is based on rules that its users know and
follow, it is called a rule-governed system” (Valli and Lucas 1) and without these rules,
communication is not possible. A nonsense text, even though it transmits nonsense ideas, uses
a common language, because there is no other way to transmit information.

There are many major subfields, or levels, of linguistics. Four of them are phonology,
morphology, syntax and semantics (Valli and Lucas 2). According to Lecercle, “nonsense
texts treat those levels as natural.” The nonsense texts can be easily analyzed along those
levels because “they seem spontaneously to conform to them.” In line with these ideas,
Lecercle holds that the texts written by nonsense authors “use these levels to play with them
as natural objects” (27). A nonsense text may lack regular syntax or it may lack morphology
according to the established standard of the language. And, it is possible that, after reading a
nonsense text, the reader does not understand enough. This could be, following Lecercle’s
ideas, because of semantics reasons, or because of the inclusion of coined words (28). An
example of a text that uses coined words is the poem “Jabberwocky” (Appendix 1), the
nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll: “Come to my arms, my beamish boy! / O frabjous
day! Callooh! Callay!” The words “beamish”, “frabjous”, “Callooh!” and “ Callay!” are
coined words and, still today, they are not listed in an English dictionary.

The concepts “coinage” and “neologism” are synonyms. Neologisms are defined as
“new words or phrases (also called nonce words) or new usages.” Ergo, those words which
become established in a language are no longer consider neologisms (Greenbaum 473). It is
not necessary to create a new word, or neologism, by positioning the different letters in a
certain way to form a completely new word unit which does not exist yet, because, for
example, it is also possible to produce a neologism by shifting the meaning of a preexisting
word. Using this type of neologism would make the reading of the nonsense text even more
abstract and, therefore, the imagination of the reader will grow much more. But, because the
interpretation of a text is completely open, especially in a nonsense text, it may not be easy to
reach an agreement regarding the meaning of a coined word which has been used in a

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nonsense text. Actually, the term neology frequently entails dissent of their novelty by other
writers “wherever they appear” (Redfern 183).

Lewis Carroll created many absurd or ridiculous ideas in his texts and, also, coined
words. Moreover, Carroll used nonsense anecdotes and tales to introduce the reader to his
logical problems that, mostly, do not have an apparent solution. The reader, according to his
or her own criteria, should analyze why these illogical problems are not rational and
concluding, in the end, reaching a meaning, and a reason, of those problems. After that, the
reader will be able to continue reading by discovering the plot of the text. The following
chapter examines in detail some examples which can be found in Carroll’s books Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

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3. Carroll’s Choice and Application of the Nonsense Genre

Following an entry in the diary of Lewis Carroll, on the 4th of July, 1862: “I made an
expedition up the river to Godstow with the three Liddells; we had tea on the bank there and
did not reach Christ Church until half-past eight” (Woollcott 1). Carroll had taken a day off
and spent it with the small daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell: Lorina
Charlotte, Alice, and Edith (Phillips 4). On the 4th of July, 1865, exactly three years after the
decisive row up the river, Miss Alice Liddell received the first presentation copy of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland signed by Lewis Carroll (Collingwood 104).

Alice Liddell was born in Westminster in 1852. She was a friend of Lewis during her
childhood and she was his inspiration for the main character in the books Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
Alice Liddell was thirteen years old when the first book of Alice was presented to her.

Lewis Carroll included a poem of seven stanzas, “All in the golden afternoon,” in the
beginning of the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which tells the adventures of that 4th
of July, 1865, during the boat trip with the three sisters. According to the second stanza, the
three little girls beg Carroll to tell them a tale and, because of this reason, this day is
documented as the day of the gestation of the tales about Alice. The final stanza is a
dedication to Alice Liddell:

Alice! A childish story take,

And, with a gentle hand,

Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined

In Memory’s mystic band.

Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers

Pluck’d in a far-off land. (Carroll 12)

Lewis writes about the tale in the third stanza of the opening poem that “there will be
nonsense in it!” (11). Actually, a few years after both books about Alice were published,
Lewis Carroll asked a little girl if she had read his books about Alice, and her answer was:
“Oh yes, I’ve read both of them, and I think,” (this more slowly and thoughtfully) “I think
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ is more stupid than ‘Alice’s Adventures.’ Don’t you think so?”
(Collingwood 106). This dialogue suggests that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There can be both included within the

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literary genre of nonsense. Carroll produced in his books of Alice both ridiculous ideas and, at
the same time, words without any meaning.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begins when Alice is getting “tired of sitting by her
sister on the bank and of having nothing to do” (Carroll 15). Her sister is reading a book
“without pictures or conversations” (15), so she is getting very bored. Suddenly, a White
Rabbit with a waistcoat and a watch appears next to her saying “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be
too late!” (16). Alice follows the White Rabbit through his rabbit-hole. The rabbit-hole turns
out to be a very deep tunnel and, unexpectedly, it becomes a very deep well without any
support. Alice falls down for a long time, or “either the well was very deep, or she fell very
slowly” (16). At the end of her fall, without hurting herself, Alice enters a world of logical
absurdities and some paradoxes, a world that she calls “the antipathies” (17).

As we can see, just in the very beginning of the story, Carroll used a nonsense
description of reality: “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly” (16). Anyhow,
this idea makes the reader think about the logic of that sentence. Can anybody fall very
slowly? It actually depends on the space-time relationship of the new world of Alice. The
very laws of physics are missing here. By any means, it is a reader’s task to interpret the story
according to his own version of what is written in the text.

Along the seventh chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there is another

example of nonsense which is related to time. During the mad tea-party, the Hatter asks
“What day of the month is it?” and Alice responds to him “The fourth”. Therefore, the Hatter
sighs “Two days wrong!” according to his watch. Because of that answer, Alice thinks that
the Hatter owns a very funny watch, as it is a watch that “tells the day of the month, and
doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!” (Carroll 70). Actually, it is always six o’clock at the mad tea-
party place, so “it’s always tea-time,” according to the words of Hatter (73). Consequently, it
does not make any sense to possess a watch which tells you the hours, it is a better idea to
own a watch which marks the days. Or maybe not. Furthermore, in this same chapter, Alice
notices that, indeed, time is not trustworthy in Wonderland:

Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with

the time,” she said, “than wasting it in asking riddles that have no
answers.”

“If you knew Time as well as I do,” said the Hatter, “you wouldn’t
talk about wasting it. It’s him.”

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 “I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.

“Of course you don’t!” the Hatter said, tossing his head
contemptuously. “I dare say you never even spoke to Time!” (71)

Time is, thus, not an abstruse “it”, rather time is a masculine “him”. The reader has the
possibility to interpret the described concept of time as he or she would like to. One possible
interpretation of Lewis’ concept of Time is the following: Time is treated in the above text as
a real person, that is the reason why the Hatter says that Alice never “spoke to Time”.
Actually, a person who lives in the real world is influenced by Time constantly and,
somehow, this person should be able to communicate and interact with the embodied concept
of Time at any time, for example, by speaking with Time –as the Hatter suggested. Anyhow,
a nonsense text could be elucidated according to the reader’s will. There is not an absolute
truth to understand a nonsense text and, indeed, nonsense texts actually facilitate the way so
the imagination of the reader flows as much as the reader prefers.

There are other examples of nonsense along the tale. For instance, when Alice meets
the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar tries to find out who Alice is. Once the Caterpillar asks Alice
“Who are you?” Alice says “I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must
have been changed several times since then” (48). The Caterpillar tries to get a better answer,
so then Alice keeps saying: “I ca’n’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, [...] because I’m not
myself, you see” (49). Hence, when a person changes for any reason, is he or she
himself/herself? Or after those changes, is the “new” person something else? It is well-known
that a person, after ten years on the average, has changed absolutely all his or her own cells
along those years, so “am I the same myself who I was ten years ago?” Again, this is Carroll’s
paradox which, consequently, makes the reader think about the sense of that absurdity.

In the sentence “I’m not myself, you see” (49), Lewis Carroll used a number of words
conveying absurd or ridiculous ideas. This is the first definition of nonsense genre which was
described in the previous chapter. But, Carroll also used language without meaning, which is
the second definition of nonsense literature provided previously. His poem “Jabberwocky” is
a prime example of this category.

“Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem which is included in the book Through the

Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (see Appendix 1). This tale came six years after
Alice in Wonderland, and it is “one of those rare sequels in literature that lives up to the
expectations established by the initial volume” (Guiliano xiv). Through the Looking-Glass is

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not a sequel of the first book about Alice, rather a new tale where Alice is in a different land
enjoying new adventures (xiv). It was indeed, Queen Victoria, after reading the first book
about Alice, who suggested that Carroll “dedicate his next book to her” (Woollcott 4). The
relation between Queen Victoria and Carroll was not the best one at that time (actually, the
character of the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is used as a criticism
towards Her Majesty) and, because of that reason, “his next book was a mathematical opus
entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants” (4).

The poem “Jabberwocky” is about the killing of a creature called “the Jabberwock”.
There are many coined words in this poem. For instance: “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
As stated earlier, the word “frabjous” is a coined word, hence, this word did not have a
meaning until Carroll used it. Therefore, the reader must decide a certain signification, or
maybe more than one, in order to be able to follow the reading.

In the second chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There,
there is a famous occurrence which involves both the Red Queen and Alice. It describes Alice
and the Red Queen running really fast for some time. During the race, the Red Queen,
constantly asks Alice to run faster and faster and, once they stop, Alice asks: “Why, I do
believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” (Carroll 152).
After this question, the Red Queen answers Alice: “Of course it is.” So, the Red Queen tells
Alice that they are running simply to stay in the same place. Alice, after the Queen’s answer,
says:

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d

generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time
as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it
takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want
to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
(152)

Again, there is a nonsense idea. Is it possible to run very fast to stay in the same place? Well,
if all the things around you move at the same time, maybe you are at the same place. But, if
you run twice as fast as that, maybe you do not stay at the same place. Everything depends on
your surroundings. Moreover, the Earth is moving very fast all the time, thus, we cannot be
ever at the same place, is that right? The reader should take into consideration his or her own

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thoughts and the laws of physics and, perhaps, he or she would achieve a conclusion, or
maybe not.

The books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and
What Alice Found There, as described in this chapter, are full of nonsense problems. But,
Lewis Carroll also used the characters of his books to express nonsense. The following
chapter focuses on the details of those characters and how the nonsense and absurd ideas flow
through their characteristics and adventures.

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4. The Nonsense Genre expressed through Characters and Symbolism

Lewis Carroll was the creator of many famous characters, for example, the Cheshire Cat, the
White Rabbit, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. Some of the features of these characters
make nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s texts but, anyhow, he eloquently used his creations to be
able to develop his tales. At the same time, he used these characters to explain logic in his
book Symbolic Logic (1896). For example, there are popular crocodiles and frogs in Carroll’s
novel Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and, in Symbolic Logic, as William Warren Bartley explains,
there is a “moving logical paradox about a hungry crocodile and a delectable baby”. Symbolic
Logic is an “eccentric logic textbook” that, still today, is read by many students of logic (3).

As stated above, the characters of Carroll have certain features, or physical

descriptions, which make little sense. There are, for instance, the grin of the Cheshire Cat, the
waistcoat of the White Rabbit or the big hat of the Hatter. The reader, on the one hand, could
think that Carroll selected these aspects of the characters randomly but, on the other hand, the
reader could find his own logic in these things. Furthermore, it is also possible to express
nonsense ideas through the qualities of the characters which make up a novel. For example,
the ability to disappear, the capacity to run and stay in the same place all the time or the
power of switching places at any time. These physical descriptions and qualities can be
categorized as symbols which can be accepted as representations of nonsense ideas.

Lewis Carroll used many nonsense ideas through the characters of his books Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The main character of these two
tales is Alice, the girl who grows and shrinks throughout the stories. For example, in the first
chapter “Down the rabbit-hole”, while Alice is following the White Rabbit, she finds a very
small door which she needs to open. Alice gets the key to open the door, but she is much
bigger than the door is. Then she discovers a bottle and she decides to drink what is inside.
Because of that action, Alice shrinks and “she was now only ten inches high, and her face
brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door
into that lovely garden” (Carroll 21). After this, Alice finds out that she forgot the little key on
the big table, so she needs to get bigger again in order to get the door key. She gets some cake
which makes her grow. But, after all, she must shrink again in order to be able go through the
door.

There could be many interpretations of this episode, hence, the reader of the tale
should use his or her imagination to find out what happens to Alice. For example, a viable
explanation is that a little girl has to be molded according to where she goes. A different

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reason could be that Alice gets older as she advances in her adventures, as an allegory of the
girl’s passage from childhood to adolescence. Once Alice is in Wonderland, she leaves behind
her own family and her own safe and comfortable life. In this new world, she has to face new
experiences by herself without any help from relatives or friends. Due to these new
adventures, Alice grows up and becomes mature, but not just at once: she grows up and
shrinks constantly depending on her needs. Somehow, the reader can notice Alice’s doubts
and concerns during her journey in Wonderland. The process of becoming an adult is not
effortless, so that is the reason why Alice, in some episodes of the tale, gets confused and
baffled, as it could happen to any other girl of her age. At any case, the possibilities of
understanding these ideas are open to the reader’s imagination.

Another well-known character is the White Rabbit, who is wearing a waistcoat. This
character is always running late: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (16). The reader
could ask himself why the White Rabbit wears a waistcoat. Maybe, to distinguish the age of
the White Rabbit, probably, as much older than Alice. Alice represents youth, and the White
Rabbit symbolizes the old age. Alice, who is very curious, chases the White Rabbit, possibly
because she wants to learn from the knowledge of the White Rabbit.

The large blue Caterpillar is introduced in the fourth chapter of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland. The fifth chapter, called “Advice from a Caterpillar,” describes a conversation
between the Caterpillar and Alice. During that conversation, the Caterpillar does not stop
smoking a long hookah while he is seated on a mushroom. “[A]t last the Caterpillar took the
hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice” (48). This episode,
perhaps, is an allusion to drugs use, but maybe not. Again, Carroll used a character in his
books about Alice to express nonsense.

In the following chapter, called “Pig and Pepper”, there is the introduction of a new
character, the Cheshire Cat. This is a cat depicted with a broad fixed grin, which is described
as follows: “The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought:
still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with
respect” (64). The Cheshire Cat has the ability to disappear, even though its grin does not
vanish at the same time than its body. Alice thinks that this Cheshire Cat’s talent is very
interesting because, as she thinks, she has often seen a cat without a grin “but a grin without a
cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!” (67). Moreover, the cat also poses
philosophical questions and logical problems to Alice and, consequently, she gets irritated and

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confused. For instance, the Cheshire Cat tries to convince Alice with the idea that both of
them are mad:

“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a
Hatter: and in that direction”, waving the other paw, “lives a March
Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you ca’n’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m
mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Alice didn’t think that proved it at all: however, she went on: “And
how do you know that you’re mad?”

“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?”

“I suppose so,” said Alice.

“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s
angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m
pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad” (65-66).

It is very interesting to think about the meaning of being mad. How can a person be aware of
his or her own craziness? Furthermore, a person can be diagnosed as crazy by a different
person; but who is able to guarantee that the person who determines the craziness of another
person is not crazy as well? By any means, everything is relative and nothing is certain.
Again, Carroll, through his writing, leads the reader to analyze his complex ideas.

The seventh chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, titled “A Mad Tea-Party”

could be also interpreted as criticism of the upper class during the English Victorian era,
where those members of the social upper class used to spend a lot of time talking nonsense
during tea-time, oblivious to the misfortunes of other social classes. In this chapter, Alice
finds “a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter
were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two
were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head” (68). Perhaps,
the Dormouse represents the boredom of these tea-meetings. The Hatter, instead, has the

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ability of switching places on the tea-table at any time. Regarding the March Hare, Alice
thinks, before meeting him, that he “will be much the most interesting, and perhaps, as this is
May, it w’on’t be raving mad—at least not so mad as it was in March” (66). The reason why
the Hatter and the March Hare are stuck at the tea time, six pm, is that the Queen of Hearts
sentenced the Hatter to death for “murdering the time” (72) after the Hatter tried to sing a
song at her celebration. The Hatter was not beheaded though but, instead, he was condemned
to be always stuck at six pm. Consequently, both the Hatter and the March Hare are mad,
because they have been doing the same things over and over for a long time.

One of the most interesting characters in the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
is the Queen of Hearts. She is introduced in the novel in the chapter titled as “The Queen’s
Croquet Ground.” In this episode, Alice comes upon three gardeners who are painting the
roses on a rose-tree red. The roses were originally white, but the Queen of Hearts does not
like white roses, hence, the gardeners, afraid of being beheaded, are painting all the roses red
before the Queen notices this mistake. The Queen of Hearts is recognized because of her well-
known phrase “Off with their heads!” The Queen unceasingly repeats these words along the
story, therefore, everyone in the tale is afraid of her. But, what is the meaning and purpose of
constantly frightening people with the concept of cutting off their heads? Probably, none. The
Queen of Hearts, besides taking absurd decisions, is the character who has the power to rule a
nation and, supposedly, a monarch should be calm and sane. Instead, the Queen of Hearts is
apparently crazy, like other characters in the novel. It seems that Lewis Carroll used the
general nonsense of his book to imply the senseless attitude of the Queen of Hearts who,
actually, could be a caricature of the Queen Victoria and a critique of her reign.

At the beginning of the novel Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll introduced a
chess problem: “White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves” (125). Actually, chess
is the base of the plot of the tale. In the second chapter, called “The Garden of Live Flowers,”
both Alice and the Red Queen run all the time to merely stay in the same place, as discussed
earlier. They both are part of a chessboard, hence, they cannot go very far. By any means, the
interpretation of the connection between the chess game and the plot of the story is open to
the reader’s analysis.

There are, indeed, more examples of nonsense in the features and adventures of the
characters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. But, this
time, it will be the reader of this essay’s task to discover the nonsense ideas and deconstruct

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the text in order to determine the new logic of the characters, reaching more conclusions
about the core of both texts. Or maybe not.

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5. Conclusion

A nonsense text improves the reader’s astuteness and wisdom and, simultaneously, the reader
advances intellectually overcoming the boring axioms which surround us in our day to day
lives. To be able to analyze a text and make new conclusions is not always a simple task. The
reader, after reading a nonsense text, must interpret the meaning of it by himself, without
trying to find out the intention of the writer. Lewis Carroll was a nonsense writer who used
many sophisticated logic problems in his books, hence, his texts are an attractive example to
break with those axioms.

The term “nonsense” is a fairly recent phenomenon in literature. There are two
definitions of nonsense. On the one hand, a definition of nonsense is a number of words
conveying absurd or ridiculous ideas and, on the other hand, nonsense could be defined as a
language without meaning using, for instance, words which do not exist. Consequently, and
according to the first definition, a nonsense text which uses ridiculous ideas will make the
reader think about its meaning and its sense or why what is written in the text is not logical or
sounds ridiculous. Regarding the second definition, a text composed of coined words, this is,
language with no meaning, will make the imagination and ingenuity of the reader progress
while building the sense and the plot of the story.

Following the previous ideas, some readers could consider that it is pointless to read a
text if it is not easy to understand the author’s ideas. Anyhow, and according to the
philosopher Jacques Derrida, a critical reading must create a text because “there is nothing
outside of the text” (Barry 66).

Lewis Carroll created many absurd and ridiculous ideas in his texts, for example, with
the introduction of illogical and unsolved problems. Additionally, he created many coined
words, building up, even more, the nonsense of his texts. Particularly, there are many
examples of these unsolved problems in Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
and Through the Looking-Glass.

One of those examples is described in a famous passage of the tale Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland. Alice, following the White Rabbit through his rabbit-hole, enters a world of
logical absurdities and some paradoxes. The rabbit-hole turns out to be a very deep tunnel
and, suddenly, it becomes a deep well. Alice falls down for a long time, or “either the well
was very deep, or she fell very slowly” (Carroll 16).

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 Through a similar way, Lewis Carroll also used the characters of his books to create
nonsense ideas. The grin of the Cheshire Cat, the waistcoat of the White Rabbit, the big hat of
the Hatter and the attitude of the Queen of Hearts are several examples. Moreover, the main
character Alice has the ability to grow and shrink throughout the stories.

Deconstructing Carroll’s text in order to reach new views of the real world increases
the knowledge of the reader. The unsolved problems and the characters of Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass help the reader in this complex task. Besides,
it is definitely valid to assert that Carroll’s logical problems are useful to understand further
how the real world works, for example, through the understanding of physical laws, and also
to discover the unreal world and the different possibilities which it offers. Or maybe not.

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 Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester
University Press, 2009.

Bartley, William Warren III. Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic. Harvester Press, 1977.

Carroll, Lewis. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The Penguin Complete Lewis Carroll,
with an introduction by Alexander Woollcott and the Illustrations by John Tenniel,
Penguin Books, 1982, pp. 10-120.

---. “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.” The Penguin Complete
Lewis Carroll, with an introduction by Alexander Woollcott and the Illustrations by
John Tenniel, Penguin Books, 1982, pp. 121-250.

Derrida, Jacques. “The exorbitant. Question of method.” Of Grammatology. Translated by

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, pp. 157-64.

Dodgson Collingwood, Stuart, ed. The Lewis Carroll Picture Book. A Selection from the
Unpublished Writings and Drawings of Lewis Carroll, Together with Reprints from
Scarce and Unacknowledged Work. London T.F. Unwin, 1899.

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. The story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of
Wonderland. Harvill Secker, 2015.

Greenbaum, Sidney, and Janet Whitcut. Guide to English Usage. Longman, 1988.

Guiliano, Edward. “Introduction. The Illustrated World of Lewis Carroll and his Alices.”
Lewis Carroll. The Complete Illustrated Works, Crown Publishers, 1982, pp. xi-xix.

Halévy, Élie. A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century – IV. Victorian
Years. 1841-1895. Ernest Benn Limited, 1951.

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Literature. Routledge, 2002.

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Lemos, Márcia. Language-Games in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Or: How language
operates in Carroll’s text to produce nonsensical meanings in common-sense
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Tigges, Wim. An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense. Rodopi B. V., 1988.

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%20911.pdf. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.

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Appendix: “Jabberwocky”, a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slighty toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
(Carroll 140)

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