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Identity Crisis Loss of innocence is often a theme in stories that center on a single, isolated child who is struggling to grow up. However, a theme authors often overlook is the loss of identity that accompanies such a lonely journey. In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the author portrays the transition from childhood to adulthood as a lonely, traumatic experience. Exaggerated growth and shrinking represent the changes Alice endures but cannot come to terms with. Carroll intends to show that Alice's suffering and isolation leads to the loss of her understanding of her own identity. Growing up for many children is a physically and emotionally taxing experience.
Alice's size changes while in Wonderland are representative of the transformations that are taking place within her. Alice feels lost, both figuratively and literally. In Wonderland, she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the door (Carroll 16). Carroll makes it impossible for Alice to reach the garden by fault of her size. After drinking from the bottle, she is too small to reach the key, and growing taller makes it so that she cannot fit through the door. Eddie Borey further explains, children on the verge of adulthood find themselves too small for adult privileges while being forced to [take] on the no-fun world of adult responsibilities.
Alice's feeling of helplessness at determining the right dimensions is an analogy to her feelings of failure to discover an age that is conducive to her happiness. She resigns herself to a physical limbo- one that children, especially young girls, feel when experiencing the changes during puberty (Emotional Changes). The situation becomes more hopeless than ever, [so] she sat down and began to cry (Carroll 21). Growing up at this point is so overwhelming that Alice can do nothing to cope. She is content with neither being small, nor being large- neither young nor old. Her identity has been lost in the transitions, and she mourns this loss with tears.
Because Alice intertwines her identity with her height, the instability of her size causes her to wonder whether she still is who she was before she fell into Wonderland. Alice's sense of identity was solid before she entered Wonderland, just as before the onset of rapid physical growth, children are more secure in their appearance as well as their personality (Emotional Changes). Upon meeting the Caterpillar, he poses the question, Who are you? (Carroll 47). Having the question she has been struggling to answer presented so bluntly, Alice replies with trepidation, I hardly know, Sir, just at present- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing. (Carroll 47 - 48). Now that her body has changed so dramatically in such short periods, Alice concludes that she is not the person she was before everything she was familiar with changed.
I am so very tired of being all alone here, (Carroll 24) Alice suddenly cries during one of her many debates concerning her own identity. The emotional impact of the loss of her sense of self causes her to feel isolated in a strange world where she knows no one- especially herself. Puberty is an emotionally trying time for children, especially those whose bodies are changing more rapidly than their mental capacity to comprehend these changes and what they mean for the his or her identity. In Alice in Wonderland, Carroll overemphasizes Alice's size changes and the emotional anguish that results from her loss of her sense of self. Her distress is illustrative of the identity crisis that all children on the verge of puberty undergo. Perhaps, if Alice could have had access to someone who could reliably direct her down the right path, would she have been able to effectively navigate through Wonderland.
Works Cited Borey, Eddie. Classic Note on Alice in Wonderland. 02 Jan. 2001... 28 Sept. 2005. < web > Path: Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1 - 3. Analysis. Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice. Ed.
Martin Gardner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 2000. Emotional Changes.
Puberty. Young Adult Health. 8 Oct. 2005. < web >
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Research essay sample on Alice In Wonderland Identity Crisis
