Blooms Literary Themes - THE HEROS ... - ymerleksi - home

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 13had taught them.” She is strict in her views about obeying rules. Onceshe even boxed her own ears for cheating at the croquet game she wasplaying with herself (W, pp. 30–33).Alice entertains a self-satisfied, even smug opinion of herselfas a rule-abiding little girl. In most cases the narrator’s attitude isclose to her own. 1 The possibility of great narrative distance or ofnarrative irony at the expense of the character is diminished by thefact that, as is sometimes suggested, Alice is listening and reacting tothe narrator while living the adventures which he is at that momentrelating. In one notable instance, just after the narrator remarks herfondness for pretending to be two people, Alice responds as if shehad heard this: “‘But it’s no use now . . . to pretend to be two people!Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectableperson!’” (W, p. 33).[. . .]A lack of stable rule-structure plagues Wonderland (and Looking-Glass land), but this does not ensure that the player will be immunefrom others’ incursions. It gives him less, not more security againstbeing imposed upon, and this is as true in the caucus-race as later inthe croquet game. [. . .] In a sense, the White Knight’s song celebratesa generalized concept of play, but it is one contrasted to work, not togames. Although in certain works Carroll seems to lament the turningof games into sport, as I hope to show, it is risky to theorize that hemust also lament the turning of free play into games. The Alice narrativesdo not appear to offer good enough or many enough instancesof primitive play to make this a valid point of reference in discussingthe novels.The world Alice enters does not operate according to mentalstructures of an age younger than herself—an innocent and flamboyantrealm of presocialized freedom and unrule-bound self-expression.If this were the case the creatures would not be so insistent onher submission to their games. Rather this world represents an olderlevel of mental organization, characterized by an addiction to gameswith rules, with which Alice is expected to play along.[. . .]Let us go forward now with Alice’s Adventures. In the roughinterplay of Wonderland, Alice is content, initially, to put up witha hard time. She is acquiescent and accepts a very humble position: