What Is Alice's Loss Of Identity

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll exemplify Alice’s struggle with growing up and figuring out who she is. In essences, she has an identity crisis of epic proportions and then again, in meager proportions, which she finds confusing. Life is confusing and learning to balance life physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually is an everyday struggle that everyone faces. According to Rivkin and Ryan who state, “Unlike Freud, object relations theorists consider the ego to be a major part of personality” (392). Furthermore, another object relations theorists in their essay, Melanie Klein believes that the “child constructing a world for itself through fantasies allow it to distinguish its destructive from its affectionate feelings through

In Chapter 5, Alice has a neck of a serpent, she bends down into the treetops to be stopped by a Pigeon who accuses her of being serpent searching for her precious eggs. When the Pigeon asks, “Well, what are you? I can see you’re trying to invent something?” Alice states, “I-I’m a little girl,” rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through, that day (Kindle). Alice goes through multiple identity crises throughout one day where she is growing taller or growing smaller to the point that she’s confused as to what she is and who she is. Bennet and Royale (35) point out that there is a fundamental disturbance of what we think and feel and that anthropomorphism in children’s fairy tales where such things as dolls or household utensils can come to life and talk, but in this case, we have talking animals and insects (37). Alice is going through an identity crisis in that she doesn’t know if she should grow up, or remain the same. Even more disturbing or uncanny are the talking animals and insects such as the Cheshire Cat and the caterpillar smoking a