Similarities Between Alice In Wonderland And A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are two pieces of fiction that have been read for generations. Though the plots are different, each story exemplifies different ideologies of fantasy, and has similar fictional elements. Both stories feature a protagonist’s exit from the mundane world into a world of fantasy, and in both stories these protagonists return to their mundane world changed by their experiences in the realm of the marvelous. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are different stories, and therefore should require antagonists with different qualities, however, this is untrue. In fact, Puck and the Red Queen appear quite similar when closely examined because they both derive their power from the realm of the marvelous, their actions exact chaos and complicate the plot, and both offer full realizations of their protagonists’ deepest desires. Before analyzing the antagonists of each of these stories, it is important first to analyze the stories themselves. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written by …show more content…

Each story begins in the realm of the mundane with protagonists who are dissatisfied with their reality. The protagonists in both stories cross thresholds within their stories which transport them to the realm of the marvelous where their deepest desires are manifested. In Midsummer Night’s Dream the threshold is marked by the lovers entering into the forest. In Alice’s Adventures the rabbit hole can be seen as the symbolic threshold used to cross into Wonderland, despite it being ultimately classified as a dream-quest. In each of the stories the protagonists return to the realm of the mundane changed by their interactions with the marvelous. The lovers affairs are sorted, and the couples are paired with their correct partner. Alice returns with an appreciation for her mundane

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