A Study on Voice and Diction: A Discussion of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

What effect does the run on nature of Carroll's first two sentences have on the following narrative, and why did he choose to use that sentence structure?

Lewis Carroll’s intentional use of the run-on sentence is one of the ways he employs the child’s voice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Many children speak with run-on sentences, and because they have not learned the formal structure and don’t necessarily have the capacity to organize their thoughts in any systematic way, their thoughts tend to build off of each other in this sort of way without ever coming full-circle. Due to the fact that Lewis Carroll was an adult writing from the point of view of the child, because the diction was very mature, he must have decided to compensate this issue in other ways than vocabulary.

Alice’s voice sounds very mature, and therefore there had to be some other indication of her age. The jumping from thought to thought, all in one sentence, does much to illustrate her youth, but is also symbolic of the Rabbit, which is mentioned at the finale, or landing, of her disjointed thoughts. The book operates in much the same way as the run-on sentences. Thematically, much of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland seems rather random. It’s fantastical and weird and jumps from one place to another, one character to another, one problem to another – just like Carroll’s sentences.

Juxtaposed with Alice, her sister’s curt, to-the-point sentences make Alice seem downright dramatic, dreamy, and whimsical. The embellishment to Alice’s diction adds to the atmosphere of Wonderland. A boring, realistic person would not see Wonderland themselves. One must be dramatic, curious, and excessive to see the world in such a different way. As it is, Alice’s sister only dreams it because of Alice’s description and knows that it’s not real. Alice’s imagination is so vivid she is left uncertain. The way Alice speaks does much to also display her worldview: the world is such an exciting place and her observation is so keen that her thoughts move at the same pace as her brain and eyes and there is not enough time in the world to complete her sentences before she’s already moved on to the next subject that takes her fancy.