The Looking Glass Wars

The Prologue frames and foreshadows the events of the narrative. It frames the narrative as the personal history of Alyss/Alice Liddell and signals how Beddor has chosen to reimagine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Prologue alludes to key figures like Redd and the Pool of Tears, foreshadowing their significance. The Prologue is also instrumental in setting up reader expectations: Alyss’s language in describing her Wonderland, “a world alive with hope and possibility and danger” (3), signals the tenor of Beddor’s reimagining. In addition, her language in describing Dodgson’s book— “stupid, nonsensical” (3), “the foolish stuff of children” (3)—signals to the reader that any prior knowledge they had of the Alice in Wonderland story will be challenged by the following narrative, which is framed as a ‘truth’ that will correct misconceptions.

Although the “she” in the Prologue is unnamed until the very end—and then only identified by Dodgson’s narration as Alice Liddell—the reader can infer, based on later events, that the scene from the Prologue takes place during Alyss’s years on Earth and that it is the precipitating event for her transformation into Alice Liddell. Her namelessness in the Prologue reinforces the ambiguity of her identity, and this ambiguity accomplishes two things: It supports the narrative’s power to challenge preconceptions, and it foreshadows Alyss’s eventual conflict in identity.

The Prologue also engages the historical context behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as Charles Dodgson was, in fact, Lewis Carroll’s real name, and Alice Liddell was a real girl whom Dodgson knew. The real-life figure of Alice Liddell has long been the speculated inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The novel’s use of historically accurate figures indicates Beddor’s intention to further frame his reimagining as an intersection between fact and fiction.

Because the novel has already been framed as a narrative that will question the ‘reality’ of the familiar Wonderland story, the question of belief is implicit in the Prologue. This question of belief pertains to one’s reality and one’s self, which is one of Alyss’s primary inner conflicts throughout the novel. This foreshadows belief’s central, thematic role in the narrative; and, as the book, on the whole, is framed as corrective to misconceptions, it invites the reader into that theme in reconsidering their own beliefs on the story.