When comparing the opening chapters of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” to those of “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, I was most struck by the difference in writing styles between the two books. In the first chapter of “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, Alice talks extensively to herself, the chess pieces, and to her cats. Her dialogue establishes her character as an imaginative, playful, and precocious child. This characterization is important for the rest of the story, and how she reacts to the strange people of the looking glass. Although traditional descriptions are used throughout the book, dialogue is much more important for characterization and at times for descriptions. Indeed, the witty wordplay and fast-paced exchanges between characters are part of what makes Lewis Carroll’s work so unique.
On the other hand “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” uses more standard descriptive language to depict its world. The long description of the gray prairies of Kansas, or the more colorful descriptions of the world of Oz are examples of this. Dialogue is much less important for the illustration of the characters and world, to the point where Dorothy doesn’t even have any lines in the first chapter. While these books do have similarities, it was this difference that stood out as most interesting to me.
This distinction is very interesting to me. While obviously part of the difference can simply be attributed to the different writing styles of Carroll and Baum, I wonder if some of it is also related to Alice and Dorothy as characters. Much of Alice’s story centers not necessarily on her, but on her relationship with her surroundings and how she interprets them. Dorothy, however, seems more internal and only wants to get back home. Therefore her story seems like it is more centered in herself, since though she clearly finds Oz a bit odd, doesn’t really concern herself too much with understanding it.