There is both logic and nonsense pervading Alice In Wonderland. The child in me appreciates both logic and nonsense, logic is for everyone a safe refuge in the so-called "known", and you can be certain of it, as with the laws of geometry. With the world of reality, with nature and with life in the sea, everything is in constant alteration, and this is obvious to children, in their continuous growing, perhaps reflected in Carroll’s having Alice grow tall and grow short, as if in a hall of mirrors. But in fact that's life seen from a child's angle.

What was revolutionary about his work is that nobody had ever said "Oh my god, the world through the eyes of a child must look really crazy", and I think that is what is most valuable about his writing. I think it was radical for the 19th century and it was maybe a precursor in the history of thought really. Because he was a teacher of mathematics Carroll did realize how sharply it differed from the logic and mathematics of the so-called adult world, although adults, whilst they remain in their heads are going through their own growth, their terrible evolution of body and self, but they tend to ignore that to be occupied with their mental efforts.

In the Alice stories, we experience conflict between the characters, and even though that is based clearly on nonsense, they still display great anxiety over these disagreements. They're argumentative, and it shows conflict in a different perspective and perhaps the light of something more detached.

In Lewis Carroll’s stories, she is in conflict with the experiences themselves, she can’t agree with a lot of them. The Carroll Alice is in conflict with dreamlike and episodic conflicts that don’t resolve at all. Lewis Carroll has playfulness and absurdity in the conflict, if carried to extremes, or trivialized, in that magical way of his.

As an experienced playwright, dealing frequently with conflict, I realize that either the serious or the comic can be acted as the other. The serious could be acted as a comedy, and vice versa, Lewis Carroll was I think fully aware of that switch.

It is clear, especially for children reading the story, that the conflicts happening are silly. This could be a good perspective for them in terms of understanding what happens in life as also a good perspective for us too! Conflict pervades a young person’s life perpetually. There's likely no time in the day that the child is not in conflict with the adult world. From the time they don't want to drink their milk or go to school or want to go feet first down the stairs instead of head first, whatever - they're in conflict with adults.

This establishes an absurd quality in life, this being at loggerheads. Maybe they make it into a silly conflict just in order to be able to endure it. This gives them more perspective by seeing others (in the story) wrestle with logic and nonsense at the same time, and they can also see that what's being expressed on both sides is really playful ultimately, even though its said very dramatically.

As adults, we see tragedy on a stage and that there can be a comic take on it, through attaining distance. Children are able to make that leap to have distance, and laugh at themselves as well as at the adults, within the conflict, and that is an amazing thing to see and to experience.

That is maybe how to overcome conflict in life, through a sense of detachment, leading to fullness. The conflict does not take away from us, we stay in our strength, we are not fooled, and that is not always true for everyone.

We could learn from being innocent, being a beginner, as a child learns and grows through conflict and other experiences and when we start to regard conflict purely as an annoyance, the childlike learning and developing no longer flourishes.