LOOKING AT ALICE’S DISPLACED IDENTITY IN LEWIS CARROLL’S ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS THROUGH A POSTMODERNIST LENS
LOOKING AT ALICE’S DISPLACED IDENTITY IN LEWIS CARROLL’S ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS THROUGH A POSTMODERNIST LENS

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyse Alice’s displaced identity in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures inWonderland and Through the Looking-Glass via a postmodern lens. To be able to argue whether LewisCarroll’s portrayal of Alice and her journeys makes her identity postmodern we need to establish whetherand, if so, to what extent it resonates with what postmodernism describes as identity. Language also becomesinstrumental in construing aspects of the protagonist’s identity, including the way in which the narratorequipped Alice with a certain kind of thinking. Lewis Carroll manipulates both her appearance and musingsin a playful and paradoxical manner. He makes his character grow or decrease – so that she may fit theplaces she travels to or enters – not once, but several times, yet the repetitive process seems to becomerandom. Therefore, Carroll creates an artistic image comparable to the computer-assisted ones. On thevirtual page’s canvas, he pastes an alternation of Alice’s sizes: one is her usual/normal size, one is smalland one big, and he keeps switching between them according to the situation or places Alice is in. Lost in astrange world, Alice tries to find herself, to create a connection with the world that she used to know butfrom where she has escaped. Even though she fights to find herself (her true self) again, nothing seems tohave any sense in this absurd world of wonders.

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