SuitabookAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
- Reading
- Read aloud in short sections, pause to unpack unfamiliar Victorian wording, and invite interpretations rather than forcing a single explanation. Compare the literal action with the sound and shape of the language.
- Themes
- Keeping a sense of self amid change: Alice’s size, surroundings and conversations repeatedly change, while she tries to work out who she is and how Wonderland operates. The shifting situations support reflection on identity and growing up, but the extracts do not establish one settled message about them.
- Language, logic and authority: Alice meets characters who use riddles, poems, insults, commands and arbitrary rules, including the Queen of Hearts’ threats. The work appears to play with and expose the instability of authority and formal language, while its overall judgement of these systems remains open.
- Worth knowing
- Expect repeated changes of size, strange creatures, a smoking caterpillar, chaotic situations, shouted execution threats, thrown dishes and language that may feel obscure or nonsensical.