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Carroll's Alice stories are considered to be full of different meanings, but what I've noticed just now is how Carroll toys with the notion of meaning itself, both literal and hidden. Using words with multiple meanings (dry, miss) or those equally pronounced (tale/tail, flour/flower) Carroll shows how easy it can be to misunderstand, but he doesn't stop there. At one point the Duchess says to Alice: "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.", indicating how the hidden meaning is ours to give regardless of that originally intended. Most works aim to deliver a message, but contrariwise, Alice stories only provide a reader with a framework in which to find one.
Halfway through the first book Alice notices how something Hatter said "seemed to have no meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English". That is a hint at the basis of Carroll's work, which is formal logic, one that deals with words and sentences in their abstract form. However peculiar and nonsensical something in his books may seem to us, it is logically valid and makes perfect sense within the worlds he created. Best examples of the importance of logic in his works are various conversations which, however crazy they get in terms of content, always remain sound, as can perhaps best be seen in Alice's dialogue with the White Knight leading to his song.
It can be said that by making formal logic a basis of his work, and building with imagination on top of it, Carroll established a special recipe for those who came behind him. A recipe that provides us with endless possibilities to create and give meaning both as writers and as readers. As Alice enters strange and wonderous worlds in her dreams so do we whenever we open a fantasy or science fiction book, books that give us the opportunity to find meaning.
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