Lewis Carroll has a lot of fun playing with language in Alice in Wonderland. It highlights its flexibility, inadequacies and the confusion it can produce if taken literally without common sense and interpretation. Its playfulness is certainly fun and raises points about some interesting quirks of language, but there's often more to the wordplay than just the joke that Alice and the Creatures of Wonderland finds in it. There are often multiple levels of meaning. A fun, playful surface layer often uses light-hearted, distracting lights and colors to mask a deeper, darker layer that lies beneath it. Because this type of multi-layered wordplay parallels the multiple layers of meaning that run through the book, by deconstructing and examining the mouse's story, an example of wordplay offers a portal through which to view the more serious, darker messages and subversives of history. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There are many lively, colorful wordplays and images before, after, and within the story of the mouse (25) that work to produce a cheerful and fun atmosphere we are in when we come across the enigmatic poem. Just before the story was told, a motley crew of creatures ran in crazy circles in the “caucus race” (23). This very funny image is then followed by a pun on the word "story" (24). The play on words and funny race imagery create a happy, silly aura to the mouse's story, and the reader goes into it without expecting deep meaning. Carroll quickly employs another pun (on the word “not/knot” (25)) as soon as the story is over, drawing the reader in and preventing them from dwelling on the darker nature of the mouse poem. Puns, misunderstandings, and other forms of puns are rampant throughout the story. Puns are inherently fun. The idea that a word conveys two ideas strikes a nerve and excites, especially if the second meaning brings with it a set of surprising images and ideas that are completely incongruous with the other meaning. Puns help maintain a light-hearted and happy feeling even when not-so-happy things happen (like the painful song of the perpetually crying mock turtle, or the Queen's adamant execution orders). As in the scene with the story of the mouse, puns, exciting events and images create and sustain throughout the book the feeling that there is nothing darker or more subversive than the innocent tale of a young girl's adventures in an imaginary world . In the case of the mouse story, the puns and silly images aren't the only things that contribute to the feeling of lightness; other elements combine to enhance this seemingly playful story. The concrete form of the poem on the page (see page seven of this article) is obviously captivating and distracting. The thought: "How cute! It looks like a tail!" comes to mind. It's hard to pay much attention to the meaning of a poem when your eyes are moving back and forth, reading only two or three words per line. Other poetic elements also enhance the feeling of fun, such as the cheerful rhyme scheme aab ccb dde ffe. More attention is paid to the look and sound of the poem than to its meaning. Although Carroll does not transcribe other parts of the story in a visually descriptive manner, the elaborate and frequent illustrations serve a similar purpose. The images, which are usually funny, distract the reader andthey draw attention to the fun, entertaining, and visually exciting aspects of the story, and not the darker, meaning-laden layer beneath the surface. By distracting the reader and diverting attention, these superficial, soulful but meaningless elements effectively hide the darker side of the poem from those who are not actively seeking it. They appeal to the casual reader and create a story that can be enjoyed by everyone. The imagery, along with various other puns and the exciting events that occur, perform a similar task for the rest of the story. Certainly Alice and the Creatures of Wonderland (and presumably most other children too) don't see beyond the fun and silly smokescreen of a fun and bizarre world. Digging deeper and trying to grasp the true meaning of Carroll's words yields much more disturbing and heavy images that correspond to darker and more adult-oriented themes. The substance of the mouse's story, much like many of the themes that run through the book, is quite dark. The story is, in fact, horrible. A dog forces an innocent mouse into an unfair trial in which the rodent will obviously be sentenced to death and brutally killed (and most likely eaten). The strong triumphs over the weak; evil conquers good. Death is often alluded to in the story. Carroll plants the seeds of these disturbing but real ideas in children's heads. Children do not yet need to face them directly, but they are aware of their dark presence. Many nursery rhymes and fairy tales do much the same thing. Carroll gives many events in Alice in Wonderland a similar double-layered treatment: on the outside they seem like pure fun and play, while in truth they have a deeper, more adult aspect; sometimes commenting on society, nature and subtext. Just before the mouse tells his story, the animals run here and there in the fantastic race to the caucus. The race, certainly exciting and bizarre on the one hand, also serves as a sharp satire of the English government: although there is great confusion, nothing gets accomplished and no one ends up with anything worth having. In fact, Alice was in a better situation (she had more candy) before the race. There are other themes in the mouse's story that are also found in the sublevels of the story. One of these, which seems to be one of Carroll's favorites, is the illogicality of many aspects of society. He conveys this throughout the book by emphasizing and treating as normal many of the completely illogical things that happen in Wonderland. In the specific case of the mouse story, a totally illogical scenario occurs. The dog, Fury, wants to play all the roles in the courtroom. (It is interesting to note that the mythological Furies represented not only horrible punishment and cruelty, but also logic and justice. The fact that the dog embodies the first negative aspect, but is the antithesis of the virtuous components of the Furies characters, compounds the lack of logic in the situation.) As the mouse rightly states, a trial in which the prosecutor doubles as judge and jury is a useless waste of time. In such circumstances one could never have a fair trial (25). The mouse story is illogical for other reasons too. The mouse tells the story as an answer to Alice's question about why he doesn't like cats and dogs (24). However, the tale does not mention cats at all and only describes an incident with a dog. Logically, if only one of the animals were to be mentioned, it would make more sense to talk about a case involving a cat, not a dog. Cats are the infamous enemies of mice. Dogs rarely get them, much less eat them. Perhaps the animal world (and the rest of the world too) was 25.