ough his characters.

The Blue Lagoon is the story of two cousins, Dicky and Emmeline
Lestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. As
children, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor who
drinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise.
Frightened and confused by the man's gruesome corpse, the children flee
to another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, they
grow up and eventually fall in love. Sex and birth are as mysterious
to them as death, but they manage to copulate instinctively and
conceive a child. The birth is especially remarkable: fifteen-year-old
Emmeline, alone in the jungle, loses consciousness and awakes to find a
baby boy on the ground near her. Naming the boy Hannah (an example of
Stacpoole's penchant for gender reversals), the Lestranges live in
familial bliss until they are unexpectedly expelled from their tropical
Eden.

The parallels between The Blue Lagoon and the Biblical story of Adam
and Eve are obvious and intentional, but Stacpoole was also influenced
by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which he
invokes in a passage describing the castaways' approach Palm Tree
Island:

"One could see the water swirling round the coral piers, for the tide
was flooding into the lagoon; it had seized the little dinghy and was
bearing it along far swifter than the sculls could have driven it.
Seagulls screamed about them, the boat rocked and swayed. Dick shouted
with excitement, and Emmeline shut her eyes TIGHT.

"Then, as though a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound
of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she
opened her eyes and found herself in Wonderland."

This direct reference to Wonderland prepares the reader for the many
parallels that follow. When their adventures begin, both girls are
about the same age, Alice seven and a half, Emmeline exactly eight.
Just as Alice joins a tea party in Wonderland, Emmeline plays with her
tiny tea set on the beach after they land. Emmeline's former pet, like
the Cheshire Cat, "had white stripes and a white chest, and rings down
its tail" and died "showing its teeth." Whereas Alice looks for a
poison label on a bottle that says "Drink Me," Emmeline innocently
tries to eat "the never-wake-up berries" and receives a stern rebuke
and a lecture about poison from Paddy Button. "The Poetry of Learning"
chapter echoes Alice's dialogue w