Alice and Wonderland
Uploaded by Quest4Glory on Jul 05, 2004
As we read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Island of Dr. Moreau, we enter into two unique worlds of imagination. Both Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells describe lands of intrigue and mystery. We follow Alice and Prendick into two different worlds where animals speak, evolution is tested, and reality is bent until it nearly breaks. It is the masterminds of Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells that take these worlds of fantasy and make them realistic. How do these two great authors make the unbelievable believable? Both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Island of Dr. Moreau float in between a dream world and reality, which makes the real seem unbelievable and the unbelievable seem real.
In H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, we see right from the beginning that imagination and reality are blended together to create an air of confusion. In the introduction we are told that Prendick disappeared for eleven months. When he was found, he told a story that no one would believe. "He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented (pg. 1)." So right from the beginning we do not know what to believe. Later in the story, Prendick is picked up by the Ipecacuanha. On this ship there are deformed and strange men riding with Montgomery. "He was, I could see, a misshappen man, short, broad and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck and a head sunk between his shoulders (pg. 10)." This is the first picture we get of the deformities from the island. During this time on the Ipecacuanha, Prendick is weak from exhaustion and in a state of confusion, which adds to our confusion.
It is later in the story, where reality really becomes deformed. First, Prendick is locked out of the inner rooms of the enclosure, because of their "little secrets." Second, Prendick walks out into the woods to get away from the puma’s crying. It is hear that he gets a good look at one of the deformities for the first time. "Then I saw it was a man, going on all fours like a beast! (pg. 38)." It is this sight that sends Prendick"s imagination wild. "The thicket about me became altered to my imagination. Every shadow became something more than a shadow, became an ambush, every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed watching me (pg. 39)." It is these...