Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The Looking-Glass World

Author: Carroll
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-06-02
Features: Alice, this "serious-faced, long-haired little girl wearing an apron and striped stockings," became a good friend to all children through this book. She brought children a wonderful world. In this world, your body can grow and shrink, and you can freely wander through the garden and the rabbit's hole. You can even enter a mirror where left and right are reversed. Thus, you can have conversations with a caterpillar, argue with a kitten, and play games with playing cards. It seems like a dream, it seems like a wonderland. A fairy tale written by a mathematician also has such imagination, no wonder it has long been popular among children! The publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a major event in the history of world children's literature. With its magical fantasy, witty humor, and poetic charm, it broke the stereotypical moralistic mode of traditional children's books, won the hearts of children, their parents, and millions of adult readers around the world, and caused a sensation in the British Isles at the time. Even Queen Victoria developed a strong interest in this "lovable little girl who remained in summer memories." It is said that after hearing her attendants read the book, the queen praised it highly and ordered that whenever a new book by Carroll was published, it should be presented immediately so that the royal family could read it first. However, it turned out that the new books by Carroll that were subsequently presented to the queen were all mathematical works, which she couldn't understand at all. Nevertheless, a few years later, Carroll wrote another sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, which also achieved great success and became as popular worldwide as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The basic concept of Through the Looking-Glass is largely the same as that of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, still telling the story of the little girl Alice's various magical and illusory experiences in a dream. The difference lies in the fact that Carroll, based on the principle that images in a mirror are reversed compared to the real ones, designed the setting of Alice's dream within the mirror. Everything in the mirror is upside down, creating a highly absurd and comical effect. Moreover, in addition to reversing the surface images in the mirror, the author also exaggeratedly inverted the norms of daily life, such as time flowing backward, logical confusion, flowers and animals that cannot speak suddenly talking, and, from the perspective of imaginary monsters, humans becoming imaginary monsters. The characters Alice meets in her dream are also eccentric and unconventional. For example, the Red Queen is unpredictable, sometimes making excuses and sometimes being kind; the famous "pair of clubs" Tweedledee and Tweedledum are narrow-minded, timid, yet fond of boasting and exaggerating; the characters of Humpty Dumpty are comically absurd, simple-minded and foolish, yet vain and arrogant. Additionally, other characters like the White Queen and the White Knight also have their own quirks, making the book hilarious to read.