SOURCE: "Alice's Journey to the End of Night," in PMLA, Vol. LXXXI, No. 5, October, 1966, pp. 313-26.

Rackin is known as a leading Carroll scholar. In the following essay, he explores the theme of chaos and order in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, calling the work "a comic myth of man's insoluble problem of meaning in a meaningless world."

In the century now passed since the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, scores of critical studies have attempted to account for the fascination the book holds for adult readers. Although some of these investigations offer provocative insights, most of them treat Carroll in specialized modes inaccessible to the majority of readers, and they fail to view Alice as a complete and organic work of art. Hardly a single important critique has been written of Alice as a self-contained fiction, distinct from Through the Looking-Glass and all other imaginative pieces by...