Rosales 1

Daniel Rosales
Kimberly Lewis
English 114B
March 25, 2014
The Twisted Dreamland Underworld
Lewis Carroll was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and
photographer. His most famous pieces of literature were Alices Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there. These two stories were written about
two-hundred years ago and are still read by scholars today and many adaptations have been made
due to the books popularity. Many scholars have tried their best to better describe or over
simplify the meanings and the symbolisms behind the pieces of art; as a scholar, this story has
caught my interest. I have known this story ever since I was a child and reading it again with all
the knowledge I have gained over the years since I first watched it, has left me more intrigued
than ever and I have inspired me to do my own analysis of the book. What makes these stories
so unique is the genre in which they were written. Lewis Carroll uses sensical and nonsensical
elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning; this genre is called Literary
Nonsense. Keeping that in mind, one must then consider ideologies, which are a set of ideas and
beliefs that forms the basis for something. A good example is the Faery Tale ideology, consisting
of a main hero character, a villain and a moral. However Alice in Wonderland is not a usual faery
tale. The whole story is twisted and out of order and it can be said that, there is no ideology for
this particular story. Or there could be more than one ideology being played at the same time
because of the numerous characters in the story and that is the reason why everything seems
Rosales 2

chaotic. There is not a cohesive ideology to Wonderland and instead every character seems to be
identified with their own personal ideology. Because Wonderland itself is nonsensical and
anarchic, there is no order to this twisted nightmare Dreamland
Donald Rackin in "Alice's Journey to the End of Night," focuses not only in the facts
behind the book but also analyses the symbolic, theoretical mathematics and Freudian
psychology. Rackin makes a note that the book should be called Alices Adventures
Underground because it is more appropriate since it embodies a comic horror-vision of the
chaotic land beneath the man-made groundwork of Western Thought and Convention(pg.8)
There could not be a better description of Wonderland. The underworld that we know was
designed to be a twisted, anarchic version of the Western Victorian society. And this is the same
reason why Alice goes through a mirror stage, because she cannot identify herself with anything
in this Underworld. She is accustomed to the social formalities and the logical thinking of the
world above her and then she finds herself where none of these are present and finds herself with
nothing to believe in.
She gets her ideology ripped from her, hence why she constantly mentions I know who I
was this morning, but now I am not sure.(pg.8) and the inability to answer the famous line
Who are you?(p.8). There is no order in Wonderland; all logic and Western doctrine does not
apply. Wonderland is a world of its own with no rules, only chaos. We see a young Alice driven
with curiosity down the rabbit hole, struggling in this new world that makes absolutely no sense
to her. When Alice wants to cross the door to the loveliest garden ever she wishes she was
smaller so she could go through the door. But there is one problem, she is too big for the door
and she finds the little bottle labeled DRINK ME which makes her grow smaller and smaller.
Her illogical reasoning that somehow she would turn small indicates that if there is any ideology
Rosales 3

to Wonderland it would be the ideology opposite of the ideology of the world we know, an anti-
ideology.
In 2010 a film was released directed by Tim Burton called Alice in Wonderland. It further
develops the idea of the ideology of Wonderland, one that counters the logic of the world we are
accustomed to. It further proves the point of that Wonderlands ideologies exist to go against the
ideologies of our world. At the beginning of the film Alice is haunted by nightmares of the
underworld. It can be inferred that she thinks that her adventures in Wonderland were only just a
bad dream, and therefore she is unaware of the change in identity she had during her adventure.
When she gets back to her world she acquires the nonsensical ideologies that she was exposed to
and they become part of Alices identity. This is the reason why she has such a hard time to fit
in her society, because Alices ideology only makes sense to her. Hence why she constantly
brings up the point of Who is to say what is proper or not? Alice gets a lecture from her mother
when she finds out Alice is not properly dressed for a public event. Another example where
Alice has a hard time fitting in the western doctrine is when Alice is forced to dance with
Hamish Ascot, a high class gentlemen, to whom Alice is the least interested in. She ends up
meditating about things that logically are impossible to do, like what would it be like to fly,
among other things, to which Hamish responds very negatively because in this society all their
minds are made up to think one way, and what does not fit into any of those values is not
proper. This is Alices immediate form of escape from this box society that she lives in. But
what is most well done in this film is the transition between the Wonderland and the Victorian
Society.
As Alice falls down the rabbit hole she breaks through the ground and lands on what
appears to be a floor, but then she realizes that everything is upside down and proceeds to fall up
Rosales 4

to what appears to be the roof. This is very effective because she ultimately ends up being upside
down compared to how she was initially falling and it signifies the twistedness upside down
world of Wonderland. In contrast with the society she is accustomed to everything is out of
order. Leaving the ideologies above her meaningless because of the nonsensical world of
Wonderland. Rackin mentions that Not only is Alices previous identity meaningless in
Wonderland; the very concept of permanent Identity is invalid.(pg.10) there is not a static
Ideology in Wonderland and in all of the creatures in it, because there is only chaos, no rules, an
anti-ideology. However there is one concept that has not changed in this underworld the concept
of death and the value of life.
Throughout the story there is a sense of madness, as the Cheshire Cat informed We are
all mad here which means everyone falls under the anti-ideology of Wonderland. Every creature
seems to be doing what they please, however there is one thing that all of them have in common
and that is the fear of the Queen of Hearts. The creatures of Wonderland avoid the Queen of
Hearts and Her short temper. As a result she has an influence on the creatures to some extent.
She is the only character that establishes a set of rules that everyone follows; the authority of a
higher social hierarchy remains in Wonderland. She holds the only possible ideology in the story,
because she is a Queen. But how does a queen rule over a land where everything is chaotic and
out of order? The answer is she does not. The Queen may be the ruler of this underworld but the
creatures are not loyal to her. What has not changed in Wonderland is the value of life, hence
why most of the creatures obey the Queen of Hearts out of fear, else off with his head. She
rules over the creatures in a very twisted way: whenever she is presented with a problem her only
solution is to behead them. However since Wonderland is nonsensical, the creatures will change
Rosales 5

their mind at any moment and decide not to do what the queen had told them to do. This is the
reason why they are mad however that does not mean that all the creatures act the same way.
One of the creatures whom we see throughout the whole story is the White Rabbit. From
the beginning of the story he is introduced running late saying Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be
late! as the story develops it is explained that the White Rabbit was late for the Queens game,
and he would not want to upset the queen. In the same manner the Duchess leaves the baby
behind with Alice because she had to go to the Queens game. Some if not all the creatures go out
of their way to please the Queen because they fear their lives. The Queens ideology influences
the Wonderland creatures to some extent. The Queens ideology is to behead all of her problems;
she is very short tempered, she is stubborn and selfish because she wants everything to be done
the way she wants it whenever she wants it. However, she is the only one with these traits; no
other character could fall in the same ideology as hers. In fact every creature that Alice meets are
very different from one another. Even the King of Hearts falls under the ideology of the queen,
as it is proved when they were arguing whether they could behead the Cheshire Cat or not,
because at the time the cat was only a head with no body, which irritated the Queen and she
almost ordered everyone to be executed, the King included. This is the Queens ideology, and
even though she establishes a set of rules for her subjects to follow, the creatures do not obey
what she says. This is why everyone that the queen sends to be executed never really gets
executed, however the underground creatures still pretend to do as she says because they value
life and care about they fellow creatures. However there is a creature that is pure madness, its
only nature is anarchy
The Cheshire Cat is the physical manifestation of wonderland. He does not have a set of
rules that he follows, just like Wonderland itself. He is whimsical. There is no order to his
Rosales 6

madness. Referring back the Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland the Hatter holds a grudge
against him because he ultimately deserted the White Queen when the Red Queen attacked the
Kingdom and stole the crown; Cheshire answers that he was not gone but merely invisible. He
does not seem to care much about what happened to his friends and it can be said that he is
selfish for abandoning them. However, later on in the story, the Hatter gets captured by the Red
Queen and is sentenced to death. Cheshire comes to the Hatter and asks the Hatter for his hat
since he will be no longer needing it. Cheshire ends up saving the Hatter from death by making
himself look like him. The Hatter then thanks Cheshire for saving him, but he responds with I
just felt like it, dont count on it. There is not knowing what he will do next. He is a free spirit
and only does what he pleases. Since there is no order to his character and his beliefs he is the
physical manifestation of Wonderland which has no Ideology. But having no ideology could also
mean there is an Anti-Ideology ideology, which is when there are a missing set of rules or
beliefs. The lack of ideology for him is like the lack of ideology in Wonderland, there is no
predictability to what is going to be, or what is going to happen in this twisted underworld.
At the very least we can conclude that Wonderland does not have an ideology, but it is
made up of an awful lot set of ideologies and anti-ideologies. Cheshire and Wonderland itself are
very identical mainly because both Wonderland and Cheshire are whimsical. There is no telling
what is going to happen next in this comic horror-vision, anarchic world. Where the concept of
permanent ideologies do not apply to any of the creatures or even things like pebbles. The 2010
Tim Burton film further shows us how twisted Wonderland is, when we are exposed to the much
older matured Alice and we see her views of the Western Doctrine after she was exposed to the
chaotic Underworld. It can be said that, based on the above worlds ideology, Alice is insane,
because of the mirror stage she undergoes during her time at Wonderland in contrast with the
Rosales 7

above world. Alice is insane by our standards because she brought a piece of Wonderland when
she got back to the above world. There is no reason in Wonderland, there is no order, only chaos
and anarchy. It is a nonsensical world that has an anarchic set of anti-ideologies, nothing adds
up.















Rosales 8

Works Cited
Alice in Wonderland Dir. Tim Burton. Perf. Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helene Bonham
Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2010.
DVD.
Carroll, Lewis, and Martin Gardner.The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland &
Through the Looking Glass. New York: C. N. Potter, 1960.
Rackin, Donald. "Alice's Journey to the End of Night." PMLA, 81.5 (1966): 313-326.