On the Nonsense, Pun, and Sarcasm in

Alice¡¦s Adventure in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll and first published in 1865, first told by word of mouth, to distract a little girl of seven (Alice Pleasaunce Liddell) and her two sisters, during a river picnic on a hot July day in the year 1862. Alice Pleasaunce Liddell, an enchantingly lovely child, drew the story from her devoted friend, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( Lewis Carroll¡¦s real name) when they paddled with her two sisters upstream from Oxford. The sun shone dazzlingly on the still water and ¡§Alice grew restless, having nothing to do, and begged for a story ¡¥ with plenty of nonsense in it¡¦, and so Charles Dodgson, began with the words which were to become famous all over the world¡¨ (Carroll)1.

In Alice¡¦s Adventure in Wonderland, Carroll uses a lot of nonsense, pun, and sarcasm that form this marvelous and well-known novel, which is not only for children but also for adults. In detail, the first part of this paper will discuss the nonsense in this book. Carroll is a person full of imagination and is good at playing the game of words. Therefore, we will be surprised at his intelligence and wonderful t

¡¥A knot!¡¦ said Alice, always ready to make herself Useful, and looking anxiously about her. ¡¥Oh, do let me help to undo it¡¦¡¨ (50)2. Hence, the Mouse was almost crazy and thought that Alice asked for trouble deliberately. We can thus know that some words that share the same sounds will easily cause misunderstanding if we catch the meaning in the wrong way. Another example of nonsense is: ¡§¡¥But I know I have to beat time when I learn music.¡¦ ¡¥Ah! That accounts for it,¡¦ said the Hatter. ¡¥He won¡¦t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he¡¦d do almost anything you liked with the clock¡¨ (96). Here, time was personified and the Hatter got the wrong meaning, thinking that Alice was hitting time and did not have good relationship with him. Carroll ¡¥s creativity is disclosed without concealment here through changing the meaning of words. Beside, ¡§Murdering the time¡¨ is regarded as killing the time and thus the time is dead, while the original meaning is put the time in disorder. In chapter IX, the Duchess, who was fond of finding morals in things, said, ¡§Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves¡¨ (119), which was another nonsense and the original proverb was ¡§Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves¡¨ (Martin 92). Carroll ingeniously switches

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