Alice in Wonderland Analysis Using Literary Critcism

“Alice in Wonderland” Postcolonial Deconstructionist Analysis



Disney’s Alice in Wonderland is a movie adapted from the popular books by Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The still popular film was created in the early 1950s and tells the story of a young girl and her adventures in a surprising, new world called Wonderland. Through a postcolonial critic’s eyes, the story can be viewed as a clash of two cultures, one young Americans are familiar with, and one in which is left up to the imagination. The two cultures individually have their own ideals and guidelines which differ very much from one another.

Before Alice knows of Wonderland, she is daydreaming while her sister is reading to her as some form of education. Alice makes a tiara out of flowers for her kitty, Diamond, as she ignores her lesson. She sings to herself, “In a world of my own, I could listen to a babbling brook and hear a song that I could understand. I keep wishing it would be that way, because my world would be a wonderland.” Alice is searching for something her culture does not offer, which is one of imagination and talking nature. She is searching for something her culture lacks.

When analyzing this piece with post-colonialism theory in mind, I recognize that there is a switch in the binaries of colonized/colonizer. Usually, in post-colonial theory, the colonizer is the one who inhabits in the new land and exerts power, while the colonized are the people oppressed by the new power and are viewed as “the Other.” However, when Alice accidentally stumbles into Wonderland, her own culture beliefs take a shift as she becomes oppressed by existing standards regarded in Wonderland, thus making this a deconstructionist post-colonial piece of analysis since the colonizer (Alice) becomes the oppressed.

When Alice initially enters Wonderland, she becomes the lost colonizer who is demanding answers from the colonized. She questions the White Rabbit about what he is late for, but he refuses to pay her any attention because he views her as less than him. The White Rabbit only states, “Oh, my ears and whiskers, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” By not acknowledging Alice, the White Rabbit implies that Alice is “the Other” for she is not seen as equal or above him.

A clash of cultures is exhibited when Alice finds her way to the flower garden in “The Golden Afternoon” scene. The beautiful flowers sing a proud song about their culture, including lyrics such as, “There are dog and caterpillars and a copper centipede, where the lazy daisies love the very peaceful life they lead… You can learn a lot of things from the flowers, for especially in the month of June. There's a wealth of happiness and romance, all in the golden afternoon.” When the flowers imply for Alice to sing along with them, she chimes in a misses a note. Because she faults when singing, they begin to question her and her presence, poking fun of her physical state of being with phrases like “Did you notice her petals? What a peculiar color. And no fragrance. And just look at those stems. Rather scrawny, I'd say…” They declare her a “weed,” even though she refutes them and states she is a girl. They state, “We don’t want weeds in our garden,” and shoo her out of their land. By doing this, the flowers enforce the idea that Alice is indeed “the Other” and will never equal the social class of them.

One would think that after this scene, Alice would be much more hostile to the relationship she has built with the colonized’s culture (Wonderland). However, in her frustration, she exerts still the same curiosity which brought her to this land in the first place, resulting in her questioning the caterpillar soon to follow. Thus, she exemplifies Bhabha’s use of ambivalence in post-colonial terms for she has a “simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion in the context of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized” (notes).

The caterpillar is a very pivotal character in “Alice in Wonderland,” for he is the first character to truly search for Alice’s identity and waits for an answer. He questions, “Who are you?” to Alice upon first meeting her, in which she responds, “Why, I hardly know, sir. I've changed so much since this morning, you see… I'm afraid I can't explain myself, you see, because I'm not myself, you know.” At this moment, Alice recognizes that the colonized culture of Wonderland has changed her identity. Post-colonial critics recognize this as mimicry, in which the oppressed subject begins to mimic the oppressing culture.

The hegemony of Wonderland is contrived of a few important ideals: time is imperative, respect for the Queen a necessity, and the understanding that “we’re all mad here.” Alice, as the colonizer, rejects the notions of the oppressive culture’s hegemony continuously throughout the movie. She is consistently wandering about, never able to find her way or to manage her time. At the end of the movie, she shows a great disregard of respect for the Queen, even though she is the most powerful lady in Wonderland with the option of another’s execution placed directly in her hands. And lastly, at the tea- party, Alice deduces that everything is just ridiculous and that she does “doesn’t want to go among mad people.” This superior culture’s hegemony affects the oppressed Alice throughout the story, yet she demonstrates sheer resistance in trying to maintain her own separate identity from those of the Wonderland culture.

Alice, as the oppressed colonizer (when viewing this movie from a deconstruction post- colonial critics eyes), is silenced in the colonized land of Wonderland for her continual inability to be able to communicate with those there. The language is one of the same, but the mindset in which the two cultures communicate in is one wholly different. The colonizers are used to “being mad” while Alice’s familiar culture is one of structure and education. Throughout her search home, Alice often finds herself in frustration by her inability to receive proper instruction from the mad people of Wonderland. Thus, the language of the colonized is one of oppression, for if one does not communicate in this format, they will forever remain “the Other” and consequently never find their way home.

“Alice in Wonderland” is a movie which exemplifies the culture conflicts which occur when the colonized/colonizer meet and interact. However, when looking at this story from a post- colonial critics viewpoint, one is better to understand the characters’ struggles by flipping the binaries of colonized/ colonizer and viewing Wonderland as the oppressor and Alice as the oppressed. By Alice’s recognition that her culture lacks something, and her desire to seek and find what it is lacking, she is sent into a whirlwind of a world which meets her wishes at the extreme. By the end of the text, the oppressed colonizer (Alice) wants nothing more but then to return to her previous culture in which she understands the hegemony and can communicate her ideas clearly.

New Criticism Applied to My Father’s Hats

New criticism involves the concept of analyzing literary works based entirely on the content of the text, disregarding the intention of the author or the reader’s subjective interpretations. In order to properly analyze a text using the new criticism format, the text must be broken down via diction, denotations and connotations. Heavily relying on hidden metaphors and self produced diction appropriate for the poem, My Father’s Hats depicts an idea of a narrator searching through the old collections of his/her deceased father’s belongings while struggling with their new doubts in religion. In using new criticism theory, we attempted to be educated readers to essentially fulfill the roles of the ideal audience (definition: a reader who is capable of understanding every intention, thought and idea written in the text). Being careful to ignore both intentional and affective fallacies, and leaving our preconceived notions behind, this is our attempt to apply the new criticism theory to this poem.

Religion acts as a dominant theme throughout this poem, with metaphors acting as the vehicle for the underlying theme. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator is searching through his religion for answers to his father’s death. This is implied by different metaphors, such as the reference to “Sunday mornings” which instills the idea of the seventh, or Sabbath, day as a Biblical reference. The narrator, while standing in the father’s dark closet, reaches higher into an unknown realm, grasping for something tangible. This metaphor continues with the idea that the narrator is searching for something real and pertinent, like a god. Another easily identified reference towards religion would be when the narrator describes “touching the yellow fruit”, which alludes to the Genesis chapter in the Bible, when Adam and Eve doubted their God and took the forbidden fruit.

The text also supports the idea for new words to be incorporated into the poem without seeming out of place. With such a strong sense of underlying religious tones, the two words solely found in this poem, “hymning” and “godsome”, un-phase the reader. Fabricated to fit their role, “hymning” is used as a verb for the wind, and also works as a metaphor for both the hymns sung at church and the natural hum of life. “Godsome” features later in the poem, and is used as an adjective to describe the air of the narrator’s memory, while also implies the religious draft of the Heavenly spirit.

The narrator’s father is only defined in the title. However, throughout the poem, his/her father is eluded to in four places by the use of possession form. The term “his” extends to his closet, scent, hair and fabulous sleep. The initial three references towards the father are physical references, which spark memories from the narrator. These memories are shaped with the religious metaphors. The final reference to the father is not physical; “his fabulous sleep” near the end of the poem alludes to the narrator’s father’s death.
The text supports that the narrator is losing his faith in God after the death of his/her father. The poem mostly consists of memories until the last three lines.
“…as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I’m not sure is there.”

Instead of continuing to be fueled with strong Biblical metaphors, the last three lines close with a sense of doubt and disappointment from the narrator. The metaphor of a canyon floor differs extremely with the metaphor of reaching and climbing a tree like initially expressed in the beginning of the poem. Instead, the canyon floor is used as a metaphor to describe the narrator being more grounded and lonely, not searching and reaching for something higher than him/her. The text suggests that the narrator has hit a low point, and is beginning to lose his faith in religion, or “water”, which the narrator is not sure exists anymore. After feeling the comfort of the “godsome air” from peeling through memories, the text supports that at the end of the poem, the narrator is confronted with the fact that his/her father is no longer there. The narrator is expressively viewing his comfort of religion fade away with the light since his/her father’s death.

The theme of My Father’s Hats is the narrator is coping with death, both his/her father’s death and the narrator’s questioning of faith. The tone of this poem is reminiscent and sullen. The narrator’s voice is filled with grace and acceptance, but yet at the same time, can be defined as confused. He/She is on a metaphorical journey to understanding why religion no longer makes sense after the death of his/her father. The text in the poem is comprised of metaphors and symbolism to allude to both religion and the father, and to the narrator’s true inner conflict at the end.



Analysis by: Ashley Nelson and Amanda Hankins


"My Father's Hats"
Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
was that of clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I can't be sure is there.

from New Letters, Volume 66, Number 3, 2000 New Letters
Copyright 2000 by The Curators of the University of Missouri.

URL: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/098.html