Throughout the myriad of dramatic adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s novella Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1872), the caterpillar, and his place in the story, has become one of the most recognizable and frequently imitated aspects of the tale. Walt Disney brought its version of Carroll’s story to the silver screen in 1951 in its animated film
Alice in Wonderland. With its expertise in animation Disney was able to take Carroll’s narrative to the level of the fantastic that the author had envisioned when composing
Alice. Within the confines of the scene between Alice and the Caterpillar, Disney did much to keep close to the text and images of the interaction inside the book. Although the outline of the caterpillar scene is in line with Carroll’s …show more content…
Once the Caterpillar notices Alice, the same conversation that Carroll instituted begins with the Caterpillar asking “who are you?” with puffs of smoke in the forms of “O-R-U.” The use of smoke as visual puns continues throughout the entire scene with letters and pictures as representatives for words. Words such as are, you, see, and why are represented by their letter-homonym counterpart. Words are also represented through pictures as symbols, the word “not” is symbolized by the smoke form of a “knot” and “why” was symbolized by a question mark. These symbolic interpretations of the
Caterpillar’s words are continually used in order to overcome the lack of ability to play with words like Carroll was able to within the text. In both the text and the film, the Caterpillar asks Alice to recite a little story, but that is where the similarity between the two versions ends. The novella sees the
Caterpillar request Alice to “Repeat ‘You are old, Father William,” (28) to which she faithfully obliges. Alice recites the entire limerick and its finish is met by the
Caterpillar’s response that she recited it incorrectly from beginning to end.