The Quest for Self in Alice in Wonderland Jamie Sung College

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll tells the story of a young girl's journey through a world of fantasy, imagination, and inner transformation. Alice begins as a seven-year-old girl who falls down a rabbit-hole and finds herself in a place called Wonderland. However. while Alice is supposed to be a child, the reader can easily follow her seamless development into adolescence from the upward trajectory of her thoughts, her actions, and her reactions from other characters. Ultimately, as Alice vacillates between child and adolescent in her quest for identity, the reader witnesses the inner journey of a child who intuitively knows that there is more to life than others may expect her to understand, and her curiosity takes her on a journey through the mind, heart and soul that leads her to a place of poignant understanding and sublime wonderment.

Alice's quest for identity and understanding is shown through the characters she engages with and the different phases in life that they represent. While the science-based functionality of developmental theory may initially appear to be incongruous with the examination of a fictitious character, Carroll demonstrates his “professional...