Lewis Carroll, author of two extremely famous works of literature: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, has proven that the two books are not dubbed as the wholesome books we all once thought they were. Both books have a much more complex structure than they seemed to have had when we first looked at them; however, this paper will only focus on the second book, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. This book specifically has some symbols spread all throughout the entire book that add up to an allegory, and is all based on how the readers interpret it. The first “literal” meaning of this book is that a young girl named Alice is watching her kitten unravel a ball of yarn …show more content…
The main symbols that add to this are the rushes, the Sleeping Red King, and the game of chess which is said to be what Alice’s adventure is based on. Rushes are plants that grow only underwater but stick out of the surface. These are a symbol in the allegory because when you pick a rush, its sweet scene inside of it slowly starts to fade and that could symbolize that once your childhood ends, your life will slowly start to become less and less exciting and more dull than it once was. The game of chess is an extremely huge symbol and theme in this story because her entire journey is set up with all the characters moving in accordance with whatever chess piece they are, Alice being a pawn. Chess is also used as a metaphor for a preordained conclusion to your life, and that you actually have very little control once you grow up because you suddenly see yourself starting to fall under society’s strict limitations on what you should and shouldn’t do and how you should act. In the story, Alice being a pawn is also used to show that she has little effect on the game, but as she matures, she slowly works her way up to being the Queen, or an