Lewis Carroll’s tale is full of allusions to the education and customs of his time. It mixes fantasy and reality , and has influenced literati, musicians, filmmakers and scientists.
Anguishing fall . Alicia’s descent through the seemingly endless burrow recalls the nightmare so recurrent in many people of falling and falling, until the feeling of increasing anguish makes them wake up. Carroll uses that image to describe the entry into the unconscious.
The rush . The White Rabbit looks at his watch and is always in a hurry saying “My God, I’m going to be late!” It reflects the anxiety, paranoid behavior and the sometimes exaggerated demands that adults place on children.
Out of routines . Adults live tied to custom, like the Hatter and his eternal six o’clock tea. Carroll criticizes assumed behaviors that are never questioned. Throughout the book, Alicia gets used to freedom and adventure, and upon awakening from the dream, she finds it “boring and stupid for life to take its normal course.”
Numbers . Lewis Carroll’s status as a mathematician is evident in the work, full of nods to algebra, number theory and logic. Alicia’s endless fall is reminiscent of the concept of limit. In Chapter 5, the dove says that little girls are a type of snake, since they both eat eggs. This deduction refers to the change of variables.
Identity crisis . The uncertainty typical of adolescence appears when Alice finds the Blue Caterpillar sitting smoking with a hookah. This arrogant question to the girl about her identity, to which she answers full of doubts, because having changed her height several times she no longer knows who she is. The Blue Caterpillar is rational logic, doubts and patience as the mother of science.
Vitality The Cheshire Cat stands out for its smile. It represents the vital sense: “You will always get somewhere if you walk long enough.”
Stretch and shrink . In the book, the protagonist increases and decreases in size several times. That has given rise to the term micropsy or Alice in Wonderland syndrome to define a neurological disorder that affects vision. The subject who suffers from it perceives objects much smaller and far from what they really are. Also called Lilliputian vision or hallucination.
Intolerance The Queen of Hearts despotically rules Wonderland. Narcissistic, rigid and controlling, she solves problems, small and large, by ordering everyone who dares to offend her beheaded.
