Through_the_Looking_Glass_Lewis_Carroll

LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS – LEWIS CARROLL (logician) IDENTITY: • Parallel world → mirror images → symbolic of imagination and consciousness. • Mirror themes included → opposites, time running backwards. • Mirrors used to reflect the capacity of the intense reality that nothing is ever straight forward. • Carroll prompts audience to question reality → the image of looking upon each day in the mirror not portraying their true identity • Absurd characters → unable to relate to • Alice→ unidentifiable in wonderland → mistaking her for a volcano → The Red King refering to her as “only a sort of thing” → amercanised' • Wonderlands confusion of alice renders her to question herself • Labels constantly redefine alices exterior surface → her inner self, thoughts and soul remain unchanged. • Constant changes of the body such as neck growing extensively → societies pressures to conform to what they believe is correct. • Alice comes across a series of puzzles that have no absolute answer → struggle to find yourself in the world (big world) • Riddles and challenges presented to alice have no purpose or answer → life frustrates perception and resists interpretation, even when familiar or solvable. • Dream → mixing with alices unconscious state • Puns → • The gnat calls alice an ‘old friend’ although they had never met before QUOTES & EXPLAINATIONS. • I WONDER IF I HAVE BEEN CHANGED THROUGH THE NIGHT' LET ME THINK: WAS I THE SAME WHEN I GOT UP THIS MORNING' I CAN REMEMBER FEELING A LITTLE DIFFERENT. THEN THE NEXT QUESTION IS ‘WHO IN THE WORLD AM I'’ → if shes not the same person she used to be, does that mean her identity has been lost' Or has the external influences merley shaped her' • ‘I’ll stay down here until im somebody else’ → alice is willing to let wonderland continually change her so that when she returns to the real world, her identity may be accepted. • ‘why, your only a sort of thing in his dream!’ twiddle dee says → alice was content in believing that it was her dream, but then she felt uncomfortable being in the red kings dream. Alluding to the fact that you will never be able to control everything that happens in this world.3