Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideasexplored in a literary work.
The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alice’s Adventures inWonderland, Alice goes through a variety of absurd physicalchanges. The discomfort she feels at never being the right sizeacts as a symbol for the changes that occur during puberty. Alicefinds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration,and sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintaina comfortable physical size. In Chapter 1, she becomes upset whenshe keeps finding herself too big or too small to enter the garden.In Chapter 5, she loses control over specific body parts when herneck grows to an absurd length. These constant fluctuations representthe way a child may feel as her body grows and changes during puberty.
Life as a Meaningless Puzzle
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no clearsolutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations.Alice expects that the situations she encounters will make a certainkind of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability to figureout Wonderland. Alice tries to understand the Caucus race, solvethe Mad Hatter’s riddle, and understand the Queen’s ridiculous croquetgame, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles and challengespresented to Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though LewisCarroll was a logician, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland hemakes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic. Alice learnsthat she cannot expect to find logic or meaning in the situationsthat she encounters, even when they appear to be problems, riddles,or games that would normally have solutions that Alice would beable to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about the waysthat life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, evenwhen problems seem familiar or solvable.
Death as a Constant and Underlying Menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in whichshe risks death, and while these threats never materialize, theysuggest that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland as a present and possible outcome.Death appears in Chapter 1, when the narrator mentions that Alicewould say nothing of falling off of her own house, since it wouldlikely kill her. Alice takes risks that could possibly kill her,but she never considers death as a possible outcome. Over time,she starts to realize that her experiences in Wonderland are farmore threatening than they appear to be. As the Queen screams “Offwith its head!” she understands that Wonderland may not merely bea ridiculous realm where expectations are repeatedly frustrated.Death may be a real threat, and Alice starts to understand thatthe risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd after all.
