Book Review: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

I used to believe that Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were all about one’s ever-lasting journey to his/her own Wonderland - an utopia of the imagination where things do not need to make sense in order to exist, where everything is possible, and nothing is surprising to its imaginery inhabitants who take everything the way it is.

However, now I think that Alice in Wonderland is not about looking ‘for a place called home’ or ‘one’s sweet escape’ - it is about accepting the weird things in the world we live in and approaching it as a potential wonderland. The one thing that was very interesting to me while rereading the books, was how naturally everything came to the original inhabitants of Wonderland and the world through the looking glass. They were not surprised about the things that shocked Alice (and somethimes even ourselves). To those characters these strange things happened on a daily basis, so there was nothing special about them. Which only makes me wonder if the citizens of Wonderland know that the they live in an actual land of wonders. Perhaps they would feel more as if they were in a wonderland if they came to our own world. 

Wonderland is every place that we are not used to. Wonderland represents the unknown, the adventurous, the different. It is not simply a place of talking flowers and marching game-cards - it is a place where the ordinary person can be surprised again and where one can escape from the mortifying routine of the everyday life. Wonderland is not a place on the map although it is as real as any other destination. Everyone needs to create a wonderland for himself and get there on his own.