"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. . . You must be or you wouldn't have come here." - Cheshire-Cat

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The “geographic” setting of Carroll’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, begins “on a riverbank in the English countryside during a ‘golden afternoon’” (Enotes.com).

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Once Alice finds herself very intrigued by a white rabbit, she finds it impossible to stop herself from following after it into a rabbit hole.  From this point on, the book is mainly set in an imaginary world that Alice finds herself in. I think that these few sentences say it best: "The setting is Wonderland, a strange and seemingly crazy world that is entered by dropping into a rabbit hole. Animals act as normal people [and where] physical size, as well as time, are relative" (Lenny's). In this sense, I guess one could argue that the true setting of Carroll’s book is in his vivid imagination.  Carroll’s wonderland is so full of nonsense and encompasses so many zany, loony, kooky, and witty characters, that it only stands to reason the surrounding world they live in be just as wacky and insane as they are.

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!" - Alice

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            Carroll’s writing style plays a huge part in why his book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is still enjoyed by those of all ages today.  He uses language to create Alice’s world of nonsense.  One might even look at his writing style as yet another character in the story.  There are many examples of how his writing style actually takes on a roll as a key part of the story.  One example is that “much of the nonsense effect is . . . achieved by directing conversation to parts of speech rather than to the meaning of the speakers — to definitions rather than to indications. When Alice asks the Cheshire-Cat which way to go, he replies that she should, first, know where she's going” (CliffsNotes). 

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Another example of how his writing style takes on the roll of a character can be seen in chapter three of Carroll’s book when the Mouse was telling a story and Carroll had the words move down the page in the shape of a squiggly mouse tail.  One might say that “the nature of nonsense is much like chance, and rules to decipher it into logical meaning or sense patterns work against the principal intent of Carroll's purpose — that is, he wanted his nonsense to be random, senseless, unpredictable, and without rules” (CliffsNotes).  I don’t know that I completely agree with the first part of this statement.  I think that Carroll did a great job at conveying his purpose through his writing style and use of language when creating this widely loved children’s book.

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"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." - the King

Works Cited

Alice In Wonderland. Dir. Clyde Geronimo, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske. Perf. Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, and Richard Haydn. Walt Disney, 1951. DVD.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993.

CliffsNotes. Web. 1 May 2011. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/Alice-s-Adventures-in-Wonderland-Critical-Essays-Alice-as-a-Character-Themes-in-Alice-s-Adventures-in-Wonderland.id-202,pageNum-32.html.

Enotes.com. Web. 1 May 2011. http://www.enotes.com/alices-adventures-qn/setting.

Internet Movie Database. Web. 14 April 2011. http://www.imdb.com.

Lenny’s Alice in Wonderland Site. Web. 1 May 2011. http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/school/setting.html.

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