Alice in Wonderland comparison- Stephanie Wowk

The story of Alice in Wonderland is a classic that has been reinvented over and over through the decades. Alice is a young girl who finds herself in a strange world ruled by imagination and fantasy. Alice approaches Wonderland as a courageous anthropologist, but maintains a strong sense of noblesse oblige.
The tension of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland emerges when Alice’s fixed perspective of the world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. Wonderland functions as a symbol, but nothing clearly represents one particular thing. The symbolic fullness of Wonderland is generally contained to the individual occasion in which they appear. Often the symbols work together to convey a particular meaning.
Alice’s fundamental beliefs face challenges at every turn, as she experiences the toll of stress brought on my time as well as reoccurring references to death. There is a sense of time and stress that is put upon Alice when she enters and travels through Wonderland, affecting her emotionally and physically. It is odd for such strong and mature subjects such death and stress related to time to be incorporated in a children’s story. Comparing the original version, Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (1865), and a later version, Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951), there are many similar as well as drastically different examples of the conjunction of time, stress, and death.

The factor of time and stress that is put upon Alice when she enters and travels through Wonderland clearly affects her emotional and physical state. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass death is a constant underlying menace. Lewis Carroll states in the introduction of the novel “To read the Alice books is to plunge into a world of narrative distortions and nonsensical explanations”, ensuing the themes of the story to be that of irrational and challenging. Alice goes through moments where she faces death, narrowly missing it in some cases. Continually finding herself in these situations suggests that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland as a present and possible outcome. An example is when the Mock Turtle sings a song about turtle soup. An eerie thing for someone or something to be singing about, but the Mock Turtle doesn’t show his fear in his possible future, which provides as an instance where death is introduced, but not in a frightening or sorrowful manner. Death appears as well in the first chapter when the narrator mentions that Alice marvels that after the fall down the rabbit hole she would think nothing of falling off of the top of her house, much less down the stairs, even though the narrator reminds us that both falls would most likely kill her. Alice takes risks that could possibly kill her, but she never considers death as something possible. The Queen of Hearts provides for us another instance where Alice is confronted with death. The Queens obsession ordering beheadings indeed frightens Alice, yet she still proceeds through Wonderland with courage that she will be unharmed.
Over time, she starts to realize that her experiences in Wonderland are far more threatening than they appear to be, insinuating that time is a key factor in Wonderland that relates to her stress and emotional levels.

In the first chapter when Alice is faced with the dilemma of becoming the right size to pass through a door, she is presented with a means in which to grow and/or shrink in order to continue on her journey. She becomes frustrated with the satiation that it is taking a lot of time and effort to overcome, and cries, resulting in a pool of water forming. Quickly finding a way to shrink in size, Alice found herself “a good deal of frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence.” (Carroll)

Alice realizes how the pressures of time lead her to a change in her emotional state, consequently putting her in a state of panic. Striving to stay afloat in a sea of tears she believes that she “shall be punished for it now, by being drowned in my own tears!” (Carroll) The relationship of time causing emotional stress on Alice resulted in an action that brought attention to the possibility of death. Time has also affected not only Alice, but the Mad Hatter as well. By time stopping still at six o’clock, the Mad Hatter and March Hare are trapped in a perpetual teatime. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse are stuck carrying out an endless thread of pointless conversations. Alice has to adjust her own perceptions of time when she discovers that Time is a person and not merely an abstract concept. She realizes that not only are social conventions inverted, but also the ordering principles of the universe are turned upside down. Not even time is reliable, a stressful and unpleasant notion. As she proceeds throughout her journey, Alice continues to encounter problems that cause her to react with extreme emotion or reason. Her attitude quickly changes from calm and easygoing to short-tempered and grumpy numerous times in the novel because she either cannot make sense of a situation or she simply fails in her efforts to do something that aids her in her journey. Many of these problems are attributed to the strain of time, whether she is trying to keep up and eventually meet up with the white rabbit, or whether she is situated in an event where stress and frustration grows by the second.

Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was created many years after the original in an animated film format. Although the novel incorporated images sporadically through the story, Walt Disney’s version is strictly visual which results in minimizing the amount of personal imagery and reasoning otherwise needed in Lewis Carroll’s novel. There are many differences between the two, structurally speaking, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland still provides occurrences that spotlight the motifs of stress, time, and death. It seems as thought in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice is less struck by danger and threat, which can lead to death. Her curiosity and intrigue in Wonderland is greater than the possible fearful outcomes of her actions. In the novel Alice notes that after the fall down the rabbit hole she would think nothing of falling off of the top of her house, much less down the stairs, even though the narrator reminds us that both falls would most likely kill her. In the film Alice shows no concern to her plunge down the rabbit hole. She even bits her cat goodbye instead of yelling for help. Rather, she interacts with the objects on the journey down and is intrigued. Later, when Alice wants to pass through the door to follow the white rabbit and cries from her failing attempt, she does not tell herself that she should drown in her tears as punishment. Instead, in the film Alice is not afraid and less stressed about the situation. She even removes herself from the safety of the glass bottle to satisfy her curiosity of the Caucus-race. Although the stress of time is constant in both texts due to the White Rabbit as well as the Mad Hatter at teatime, the film includes some examples of time and stress that are not included or dedifferentiate from the novel. For example, when Tweedledum and Tweedledee find Alice while she is walking through the woods they first confuse her, but then grab her attention with offering to tell her a story. Alice is once again intrigued and listens to their story of the walrus and how he ate the clams, referencing death. After the story however, Alice wishes to be on her way but Tweedledum and Tweedledee will not excuse her. Wanting to be on her way and wishing to catch up with the White Rabbit, Alice grows impatient that time is wasting so she sneaks away from the two. Alice experiences the effects of time stress again towards the end of the film when she and the Queen of Hearts begin a game of croquet. In Carroll’s novel, Alice’s anger grows when the flamingo’s neck becomes limp and the hedgehog unrolls itself. It is impossible for her to play, but the Queen insists that she proceeds. Afraid that at any moment the Queen will give orders to have Alice’s head cut off, Alice asks the flamingo “Do you want both of us to loose our heads?!”. When the flamingo shakes its head and says “uh-huh!” Alice’s patient’s runs out and her anger increases. Here, the presence of death is starting to frighten Alice even though there is still a silliness that the flamingo seems to retain which makes the idea of death in the film not so serious. In the novel, Alice actually starts to laugh at the flamingo and the hedgehog when they start to misbehave. She seems less concerned about the risk of decapitation and more amused with the game and all that it was made up by.

Throughout the novel Time provides constant reminders that it can punish those who have offended it. Alice desires meaning, order, coherence, and sanity, quickly realizing that Wonderland is nothing of the sort and that she continuously will be faced with factors that breed stress, anger, frustration, and threats of death. I find it interesting that Lewis Carroll would include death as a reoccurring threat or outcome in the novel (as well as Disney’s Alice in Wonderland). As I read, I noticed that Alice would often make many ties to her own actions and death. It seems as though she is not afraid of the notion of an end, but rather accepting of it. Although, a constant, death seems to never fully follow through. Either it is just a thought or the act of death really does occur but is quickly dismissed with immortality. Also, the pressure of time and its accompanying factors of anger, frustration, and stress is a constant and strong motif that I also found important within these two texts. Alice, as well as other characters, seems to really be affected by time. It inhibits, delays, and/or stresses Alice and her journey through Wonderland, at times leading to her loss of temper and will to continue her efforts to make sense of things.

What’s intriguing about the incisions of death and time and stress in both versions isn’t so much the constant reminder of the two, but how a girl experiences them at such a young age. Alice’s involvement with adult situations is peculiar because she cannot possibly understand the sadness and weight of death. Also, it is very unlikely for a young girl to be affected by the constant ticking of the clock. Growing older and the development of responsibilities go hand in hand, as does the pressure to attend to all those responsibilities. Alice is at too young of an age to be involved in such engagements and should not feel the frustration of time, yet does. Both Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as well as Walt Disney’s film Alice in Wonderland have the constant motifs of time, stress, and death that give the classic story its eeriness as well as its strong and powerful message.