“The past is not dead. It’s not even the past”: Neo-Victorian Chaos, Order and Identity in Alice: Madness Returns

Abstract

Among the most celebrated works of the Victorian era, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland stands out as a timeless classic with its fun and mad characters in a world of randomness and nonsense. The videogame adaptation of this well-known world in American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns (2011) reintroduces the story with a much darker edge. In Alice: Madness Returns, Alice is now a young lady and she is traumatized by her past as she lost her entire family in a fire and blames herself for this tragic event. This article aims to analyse this new version of Alice from a neo-Victorian perspective, taking Alice as a reflection of the postmodern self in her quest of order in a chaotic world. In her struggles to recover and find the true meaning, Alice needs to restore her memories; and this article further aims to show the need for returning to the past in the process of healing and what this may mean in our connection to Victorian past.

Keywords

• neo-Victorianism
• chaos
• order
• videogame
• identity

“Geçmiş ölü değildir. Hatta geçmiş bile değildir”: Alice: Madness Returns’de Neo-Viktoryen Kaos, Düzen ve Kimlik

Abstract

Lewis Carroll’ın Alice Harikalar Diyarında adlı eseri, rastgelelik ve saçmalıklarla dolu bir dünya içerisindeki eğlenceli ve deli karakterleriyle Viktorya döneminin en bilinen ve sevilen eserlerinden birisi olarak öne çıkmaktadır. Herkesçe tanınan bu dünyanın American McGee tarafından oluşturulan Alice: Madness Returns (2011) adlı bilgisayar oyunu uyarlaması ise hikayeyi bu defa çok daha karanlık bir şekilde ele alır. Oyunda genç bir kız olan Alice, bütün ailesini bir yangında kaybetmiştir ve bu olayla ilgili olarak kendini sorumlu tutması sebebiyle geçmişine ait travmalar altında ezilmektedir. Bu makale, kaotik dünyada düzen arayışı içerisinde olan postmodern bireyin bir yansıması olarak bu yeni Alice’i neo-Viktoryen bir açıdan incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. İyileşme ve gerçek anlamı bulma yolculuğunda Alice’in oyunda hafızasını geri kazanması da gerekmektedir ve bununla ilgili olarak makalenin diğer bir amacı da iyileşme sürecinde geçmişle olan diyaloğun önemini ve bu durumun Viktoryen geçmişle olan ilişkimiz açısından ne anlama geldiğini analiz etmektir.

Keywords

• neo-Viktoryenizm
• kaos
• düzen
• bilgisayar oyunu
• kimlik

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