Worldbuilding Story Spotlight

Alice in Wonderland 

by Lewis Carroll

Further extending my post from Monday on Logic in Worldbuilding, this article explores logic within the illogical in Carroll’s classic tale of when Alice slips through the infamous rabbit hole. According to Vandermeer in The Wonderbook, a well realized setting is coherent with consistent logic and the pieces of the world fit together. He claims that Alice in Wonderland adheres to its own rules and doesn’t break them.¹ I wish he’d given further examples of how this played out so that I could judge my understanding against his meaning.

Regarding Alice in Wonderland, I tend to align that to cause and effect (a Worldbuilding 101 essay which is forthcoming) rather than logic and consistency, but let’s look at some examples of things within the world built by Lewis Carroll.

• Alice drinks a potion and shrinks to fit through the door. Logically, based on this evidence, one could contend that drinking beverages causes you to shrink in Wonderland. However, as we further explore the world, that argument would seem to not to hold true.
• Alice eats a small cake at the end of Chapter 1, but does not grow immediately…instead, she grows at the beginning of Chapter 2.
• Later in the story, when she finds a liquid labeled “DRINK ME,” she begins growing rapidly and when she eats the crumbs of cake labeled “EAT ME,” she shrinks.
• This all seems highly inconsistent, but in this world that Lewis Carroll built, we could argue that these instances support an argument that Wonderland is built around confused principles. This is further supported in the narrative by other confused happenings such as:
  • The baby turning to a pig in her arms
  • The confusion around the passing of time at the Mad Tea Party
  • In fact, the characters who live in Wonderland consider the chaos present to be a perfect norm. The Frog Footman doesn’t react to the flying plate and continues as if nothing happened.
  • Alice attempts to fit the behaviors into a logical structure, failing to understand that Wonderland’s order is defined by chaos. 
  • Even though there seems to be a rigid social structure in Wonderland, characters reject the normal conventions in such a hierarchy.
• The structure of Wonderland is a world inlaid with chaos that enables the protagonist to apply a higher level of logic and consistency to her own so-called normal world.

Also in The Wonderbook, Catherynne M. Valente’s essay: What Everyone Knows gives us another good way to consider making your worlds consistent. This recommendation aligns well with my One Page Setting Worksheet. I’ve included the link to download that here as well.

• When creating your setting, ask yourself, “What does everyone in my story know?”
• She goes on to state, “The thing about What Everyone Knows is, it’s only sometimes factual–I hesitate to say ‘almost never,’ but that’s probably closer.” ¹  (223)

I particularly like this tactic, because it helps to bring you back to your characters and connect the world to how the characters experience the world you’re building. Let’s think about this in fiction. Naturally, I have a difficult time straying from a solid go-to in the worldbuilding arena…Tolkein. I’m sorry, but bear with me. 

• In Lord of the Rings, what does everyone know about Hobbits? Well, given that there is an entire prologue–Concerning Hobbits–Tolkien sets this forward before diving into the story itself.That’s a tactic that most readers won’t tolerate in contemporary fiction. However, we know that they are homey, that they like to eat and drink, that they are naturally afraid of water. Then we turn to how the characters themselves view Hobbits, and that varies greatly. For example, Gandalf believes that there is a quiet strength in their good-naturedness. Bilbo, in contrast to most hobbits, has a desire to travel. Sam is the quintessential hobbit, but is loyal to a fault and faces his fears because of his loyalty. Tolkien shows and amplifies What Everyone Knows through his characters and how they differ from that norm.
• In Alice in Wonderland, all the residents of Wonderland seem to know that one must be mad to understand the structure of the world. It turns out that when we apply Ms. Valente’s question to this work,what everyone knows is that confusion and juxtaposition is the norm.

With that, ’tis true, I am late. I’ll be seeing you again in blogworld soon!

Hugs and kisses to all!

Footnotes/Endnotes

1. Jeff Vandermeer, Wonderbook, (New York, Abrams Image, 2018) 211-244.