Going down, down, down, down, down...

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is no doubt one of literature's greatest accomplishments, having reached a level of fame not many other books can even dream of achieving

The entire book starts with a lazy Alice on a riverbank, drowsily looking over her sisters shoulder, when she spot's a rabbit in a waistcoat running by. He pulls out a pocket watch and exclaims that he is late, then proceeds to jump down his rabbit hole. Being a curious girl of ten or eleven, she naturally follows him down, and this is where the adventures begin. Ranging from conversations while falling down the rabbit hole, to croquet with playing cards and flamingos, Alice's adventures in wonderland are ever-expansive and go beyond the normal imagination, something only someone like Lewis Carroll could create.

Comparable to the work of Dali, much of the novel makes no obvious sense, a characteristic noticed even by Alice. Largely open to interpretation, there are multiple ways to approach the writing of Carroll, and multiple ways of trying to understand exactly what he may have been trying to say. For example, the growing and shrinking phases Alice struggles with throughout the novel are said to symbolize the changes of puberty, and Alice's manic behavior, a mere symptom of the frustrations that are associated with the phase. The constant riddles Alice encounters that seem to have no meaning or solution serve to show life as a meaningless puzzle. Also, at first, Alice's confusion and curiosity in Wonderland leave her oblivious to the dangers lurking everywhere. The reader may observe Alice's initial carelessness, not intentional necessarily, just brought on by her lack of focus on anything besides the wonders surrounding her. She later finds, however, that death may indeed still exist in this new realm. Consider the Queen who parades, shouting "Off with their heads!" throughout the novel.

Having read this book for the first time when I was eleven or twelve, I've been a fan ever since, first as someone who could relate to Alice and someone to who looked for an escape similar to that of Wonderland, then as a teenager who experienced her own shrinking and growing phases, anatomically, emotionally, psychologically, and mentally, and now, in a pre-adult phase, looking at the text purely analytically as Carroll may have written it.

In essence, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone, both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And just as a side note, no movie will ever do the human imagination justice.