Human-Animal Relationship in Alices Adventures in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - Book Report/Review Example

Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Human-Animal Relationships Human-Animal Relationships: Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland Introduction Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland is published by Lewis Carroll. It is an amazing account of a dream world where creatures could discuss, communicate, spice up and communicate socially like humans. The tale moves around the character, Alice. She is a little lady who drops sleeping and goals about a wonderland or fairy land where she encounters several activities. I have selected this tale because this tale provides significant amounts of information on human-animal connections. Animals are proven as highly effective in most of the cases; hence, the changed truth that is revealed got my attention. Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit hole Alice, a young girl, accompanies her sister by the river bank who is reading a book. All of a sudden, Alice observes a White Rabbit crossing them that pulled out the watch out of his waistcoat to check time and he realized he is late for some important task. The civilized rabbit grabbed the whole attention of Alice and she starts following him out of curiosity. She followed rabbit into the hole and the ‘hole’ contained different shelves and things placed there. She pick up marmalade jar but puts it back as she finds nothing in it. She looks at the Rabbit quickly vanishing in one corner of the hallway with many doors. She looks for any unlocked door without success and comes across a little door that is smaller than all others and found a key on a glass table. She opens the door but realizes her inability to fit the passage way and finds a bottle captioned “Drink Me”. After she drinks it and her body shrinks in proportion to the size of that door. She forgets to pick the keys and cries for her mistake. While crying she sees some cake with a caption “eat me”, she quickly eats it and awaits a reaction. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The nature of the rabbit shows the resemblance with human activities and nature. Thus the story generates a relationship between humans and creatures. Alice’s relationship with Dinah is visible by her apprehensions and readiness to see her at dinner. This more supports the idea of human-animal relationship that occurs and brings weight for both the beings. Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears The cake grew her larger than the original size and the passageway seemed tinier than ever. The feeling of helplessness surrounds Alice before she sees the white rabbit again. Her attempt to communicate with the rabbit horrifies him and he runs away leaving his fans and gloves. She fells in to a small pool with salt water, which actually were the tears she shed in her gigantic stage. While swimming in the water she meets a Mouse who does not understand English, so she starts using French and ask for some help. She repeatedly mentions Dinah in her conversation that offended the Mouse and she apologizes for it. Later on, they went together with other animals that fell in the pool and the mouse proposes to explain his hatred towards cats and dogs on the shore. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis This chapter displays the communication of the Mouse and Alice. This reveals the caring and benevolence of the Mouse to get Alice alongside irrespective of the insignificant conversation. Alice’s spirits towards Dinah additional reveals the actual affection and liking that lies in human-animal relations. Chapter 3: A Caucus Race and a Long Tale Alice and the animals reach the shore but they are all wet. Dodo suggests a Caucus race to dry them off. The race lasts for half; Dodo declares all of them as winners and Alice is given the responsibility to award them with prizes. Alice’s own thimble being awarded to her seemed absurd, yet she remained silent. Alice told the mouse to begin his story. The mouse soon realized that Alice is just ignoring him and walks away out of anger. Hearing about Dinah and her acts, birds and other animals leave Alice alone and move back to their places. Alice is at the verge of crying when she hears the tapping of someone’s footsteps. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The association among animals and humans is exposed in this chapter through emphasizing the differences that exist. Animal-human association is built not only on how human beings want their pets and animals to be. Rather it needs importance of both gatherings to be satisfied and security being provided to the animals for a enduring and supported connection. In the above case, Animals left Alice for the uncertainty they felt by the human wish of keeping Dinah along. Chapter 4: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill The white rabbit inquires about his lost fans and gloves and directs Alice to bring them from home. There she finds a bottle labeled Drink me, which results in enlarging her height that wrecks the house of the rabbit. Rabbit helped her by throwing pebbles that becomes cakes in the hand of Alice. After eating the cake she become small again and run into woods where she climbs a mushroom and meet the caterpillar. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis This chapter delivers a vision to the altered authenticity. What if the animals control over us? The world would be diverse. We treat creatures and trained them in our own consideration and in the enactment of entertainment for ourselves. Even the sign of such an impression shocks us, how do the animals actually stand our guidelines and cruel performances. This abridges the human-animal connection as master and slave. Therefore, the reality of human is exposed by viewing small signs of powerlessness and misrepresentation by Alice when she was being stucked by the small animals and against the enormous puppy. The animals exhibited antagonistic appearances. Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar The caterpillar requests for an overview from Alice but being jumbled about her identity she fails to reply him appropriately. The caterpillar tells her that the right and left sides of the Mushroom help increasing and decreasing the body size without stating which side is for what purpose. The right side shrinks her greater and the left side makes her neck long deceiving a pigeon consider that she is a snake. Alice reaches her actual size by eating the both sides and found a house. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The caterpillar is shown as an antagonist with negative characteristics of ignorance and selfishness. Alice’s misunderstanding of being his size offended him so did not guide her futher. The human-animal relationship seems quite weak in this part. The pigeon’s attack further sheds light on the innocence of animals to not recognize the difference between their enemies and others. This also secretly reveals how humans attack animals without knowing if they may harm or not. Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper Alice experiences a fish footman by the door of that house. Alice tries to have a communication with the fish footman without success and moves into the house. She sees duchess with a baby, a grinning cat and a cook busy occupied with a cauldron of soup; pepper remains a part of the Kitchen air with the baby’s loud cry. Alice finds strange responses from the Duchess as she asks about the grinning cat, which is told to be a Cheshire cat. The Duchess does not like Alice’s intrusion and hence, speaks quite rudely. The Cheshire cat reveals that people around are all mad and Alice, if yet not mad, will have to be a part of this community. Alice being helpless starts moving towards the house of March hare. Alice takes a portion of the Mushroom to be a fit for entering March Hare’s house. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The Cheshire cat helps Alice and shows positivity of her character. The Frog and fish doormen show the socialized structures that prevailed in the wonderland, but the arrogant behavior of the Duchess and the cook reveal the other side of the picture. The happenings were not normal, yet the cat and Alice maintained the relationship enough to keep Alice going. Human-animal interaction is often of the same sort; they do not understand each other fully, yet they miss the presence, recognize each other and interact in different manners. Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party Alice finds mad hatter and March hare on the tea table resting with their elbows on the dormouse. Alice gets into an argument with them over the uncivilized behavior they showed. They kept arguing on different matters including the invitation, the watch, the riddle, her hair and so on. As the time passes they feel the need to listen to a story and arouse the Dormouse. The Dormouse then initiates a puzzling story of three sisters. The story outstretched many questions in Alice’s mind and she started inquiring different queries. Alice got anger by Mad hatter interruption and walk off in the woods again. Where she finds a door imprinted in a tree and goes inside. There she finds a table that had keys on it so; she eats the mushroom and pass the door leading to the corridor from where the entire misery started. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis Mad Hatter and March Hare were negative in their nature and are rude, violent and uncivil with Alice. The reason behind such circumstances is lack of communication and understanding of one another. They do not consider Alice as a part of them and argues to defend their attitude. We may relate these to our life where human-animal interaction is filled with chaos when a failure of comprehending the needs, desires and expectations of each other occurs. Chapter 8: The Queen’s Croquet Ground Thinking her misery has finished, Alice moves into the garden but saw the three gardeners changing the color of white roses into red roses which they planted incorrectly. When the Queen appears, she notices the mistake and order for execution. The gardeners ask for support from Alice and she hides out them in a pot. Queen invites Alice for croquet match where she meets the White rabbit on her way that exposes the penalty of duchess by the Queen. Alice shortly understands that the Queen has an evil rage as she asks for the killing of anybody she does not like at that time. Alice leaves the match and meets the Cheshire cat where she finds out that the cat is being tormented by the King. The king order for the killing of the cat but couldn’t come up with a method and asks for Alice advice. Alice indorses asking Duchess as she possessed the cat but the cat runs before the Duchess. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The Queen and the King are antagonists as they are neither loyal nor sympathetic towards any of the animals or Alice. They are shown as self-centered creatures who like to impose their principles and judgments. The relationship between humans and animals is shown as a positive one, since Alice and the cat talk shared similar ideas wisely. Chapter 9: The Mock Turtles Story The Duchess takes Alice back to the Queen and the match. The match begins and soon the grounds are clear with no players left. The Queen announces execution for all of them and orders to take Alice to the Mock turtle. Alice meets the Gryphon and the mock turtle that who seemed a gloomy creature to Alice and likes gaining sympathy and reveals the old, happy story. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis This part shows some positive aspects of human-animal relationship in terms of pleasing interaction and feelings for each other. The queen’s announcement of execution which were later taken back show a positive element of the human life, where they take selfish decisions but are not cruel enough to work on them. Human-Animal relationship seems weak where thoughtfulness, emotions and intellect comes in. Human beings are more thoughtful, caring and wise to think of every possible creature that dwells in their surroundings. So, the idea of executing every person as the Queen of cards said, does not exist in human beings as they believe in keeping the distinct alive on Earth and protect them. Chapter 10: The Lobster Quadrille The mock turtle and Gryphon asks if Alive had ever come across the Lobster Quadrille. On her refusal, they offered to show and explain her Lobster dance. Without the Lobster they showed Alice the dance and sang a song. On their way to lobster Quadrille, Alice tell her adventures in the wonderland and on the account of Caterpillar they ask Alice to recall the poem or lessons she forgot. Alice asks for a song by Mock Turtle. Suddenly they hear a loud voice ‘the trial’ beginning’. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis Gryphon and mock Turtle are friendly. The tears in mock Turtle’s eyes on the topic of his death show the human-animal similarity in having emotions and the distress he had faced somewhere in the Wonderland. The story promotes these emotions and the appeal, as a result, is to keep animal rights and feelings safe from the behavior of humans. Chapter 11: Who Stole the Tarts? As Alice reaches the trial she finds that the trial is about stealing tarts from the queen of hearts. The king of hearts remains the judge and jurors include many animals that were present at that time. Hatter is called as a witness and for the wrath of the King, ordered to be beheaded but he manages to run away. Cook comes next as a witness. Dormouse interrupts the trial and the Queen commands his execution. During the dispute cook runs away. Alice is called as a witness by rabbit. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis The ideas in this part are closely linked to human beings’ and their life. The account of execution is not a factor of animals’ life but of human beings. The systematic manner of calling witnesses in a court is another similarity created between a man and an animal. Chapter 12: Alice’s Evidence Alice reaches the trial room on the call of the White rabbit. She forgets that she is overgrown and opposes the order of the king to leave the trial and the court’s decision, on the account of which she is declared to be executed by Queen. Due to her size, she fights against the cards easily. Suddenly Alice wakes up from her sleep and finds out that the whole Wonderland trip was a dream. She tells her story to her sister, who lives the dream of Alice being a responsible lady in her future telling the Wonderland story to her children. Human-Animal Relationship Analysis This part of the story exposes the true distinction between a human being and an animal. Animals have no logic and reasoning whereas humans decide on logic. The king, for instance, liked using his power and not the reasons to maintain justice. The queen called for an execution wherever she felt some opposition. Animals escaped the trials and punishment. Alice had raised her voice for her right and fought against the wrongful decisions. Conclusion In conclusion, we can say that human beings have the power of wisdom and intellect. They can build stronger relationships, not only with other human beings but also with the creatures that exists in this world. The human-animal relationship is strong and continuously evolving. Animals are no longer taken as modes of transportation or tools to help with other works, but they are considered as a part of the society and our environment. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland sheds some light on how animals are treated by their fellows, humans and how human beings could feel if they were treated like we treat animals.   Reference Carroll, Lewis, and Helen Oxenbury. Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Cambridge, Mass: Candlewick Press, 1999. Print. Read More