Historical Context

The Victorian Age in England

According to his own account, Lewis Carroll composed the story that became Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland on a sunny July day in 1862. He created it for the Liddell
sisters while on a boating trip up the Thames River. Although the book and its sequel
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There have since become timeless
classics, they nonetheless clearly reflect their Victorian origins in their language, their
class-consciousness, and their attitude toward children. The Victorian age, named for the
long rule of Britain's Queen Victoria, spanned the years 1837 to 1901.
The early Victorian era marked the emergence of a large middle-class society for the first
time in the history of the Western world. With this middle-class population came a spread
of so-called "family values": polite society avoided mentioning sex, sexual passions,
bodily functions, and in extreme cases, body parts. They also followed an elaborate code
of manners meant to distinguish one class from another. By the 1860s, the result, for most
people, was a kind of stiff and gloomy prudery marked by a feeling that freedom and
enjoyment of life were sinful and only to be indulged in at the risk of immorality. Modern
critics have mostly condemned the Victorians for these repressive attitudes.
The tone for the late Victorian age was set by Queen Victoria herself. She had always
been a very serious and self-important person from the time she took the throne at the age
of eighteen; it is reported that when she became queen, her first resolution was, "I will be
good." After the death of her husband Albert in 1861, however, Victoria became more and
more withdrawn, retreating from public life and entering what became a lifelong period
of mourning. Many middle-class Englishmen and women followed her example, seeking
to find morally uplifting and mentally stimulating thoughts in their reading and other
entertainments.
Victorian Views of Childhood
Many upper-middle-class Victorians had a double view of childhood. Childhood was
regarded as the happiest period of a person's life, a simple and uncomplicated time. At the
same time, children were also thought to be "best seen and not heard." Some Victorians
also neglected their children, giving them wholly over into the care of nurses, nannies and
other child-care professionals. Boys often went away to boarding school, while girls were
usually taught at home by a governess. The emphasis for all children, but particularly
girls, was on learning manners and how to fit into society. "Children learned their
catechism, learned to pray, learned to fear sin and their books were meant to aid and
abet the process," states Morton N. Cohen in his critical biography Lewis Carroll. "They
were often frightened by warnings and threats, their waking hours burdened with
homilies. Much of the children's literature were purposeful and dour. They instilled
discipline and compliance." Although the end of the century saw a trend toward
educating women in subjects taught to men, such as Latin and mathematics, this change
affected only a small portion of the population, specifically the upper classes.

This emphasis on manners and good breeding is reflected in Alice's adventures. She is
always apologetic when she discovers she has offended someone, and she scolds the
March Hare for his rude behavior. Nevertheless, Carroll seems to share the view that
childhood was a golden period in a person's life. He refers in his verse preface to the
novel to the "golden afternoon" that he shared with the three Miss Liddells. He also
concludes the book with the prediction that Alice will someday repeat her dream of
Wonderland to her own children and "feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a
pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer
days." On the other hand, Alice's own experiences suggest that Carroll felt that children's
feelings and emotions were fully as complex as any adult emotions. By the end of the
novel, she is directly contradicting adults; when she tells the Queen "Stuff and nonsense!"
she is acting contrary to Victorian dictates of proper children's behavior.
The Early Development of Children's Literature
"Children's literature" first emerged as a genre of its own in the mid-1700s, when English
bookseller John Newbery created some of the first books designed specifically to
entertain children. (He is honored today in the United States by the American Library
Association, who awards the annual John Newbery Medal to the best children's work of
the year.) Prior to that time, works published for children were strictly educational, using
stories merely to impart a moral message. If children wished to read for entertainment,
they had to turn to "adult" works, such as Daniel Defoe's 1719 classic Robinson Crusoe.
Despite Newbery's groundbreaking work, few works of entertainment for children
appeared over the hundred years.
Most early Victorian fairy-stories and other works for children were intended to promote
what contemporaries believed was "good" and "moral" behavior on the part of children.
Carroll's "Alice" books take a swipe at this Victorian morality, in part through their
uninhibited use of nonsense and wordplay (a favorite Victorian pastime) and in part
through direct parody. Alice recalls in Chapter 1 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that
"she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up
by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the
simple rules their friends had taught them." Most of the verses and poems Carroll
included in the story are parodies of popular Victo-rian (i.e., morally uplifting) songs and
ballads, twisted so that their didactic points are lost in the pleasure of wordplay.
Carroll's "Alice" books were part of a flourishing movement throughout the world to
write entertaining books for children. English translations of the fairy tale collections of
the German brothers Grimm first appeared in the mid-1820s. The tales of Danish writer
Hans Christian Andersen appeared in English in 1846. The United States saw Louisa May
Alcott's Little Women in 1868 69, part of a movement to publish realistic stories for
children. In England, many noted authors for adults published works for children,
including Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose 1883 work Treasure
Island is considered a classic children's adventure story. The ground broken by Carroll
and other children's authors of the nineteenth century led the way for today's huge market

for children's books, which have their own publishers, critical scholars and journals, and
librarians.

Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at
Christ Church, OxfordHis diary is filled with mysterious, scathing self-reproaches and desperate
prayers to God to free his soul from sin. He never explains the origin of these intense feelings of
guilt, ....the Alice books, with their charmingly exaggerated presentation of the child's quest to
survive and eventually become part of the adult world, are filled with thinly-veiled references to
Carroll's affection for his young friend and deep sorrow at losing her to the onset of adulthood.
Alice - An English girl of about seven with an active imagination and a fondness for showing
off her knowledge (which often is lacking). She is polite and kind-hearted and genuinely
concerned about others. Brave and headstrong, she always follows-through when she gets an
idea. She is more confident with her words and sure of her identity in the second book.
Alice in Wonderland Cheshire-Cat - A grinning cat with the ability to appear and disappear at
will. He claims to be mad; nevertheless, he is one of the most reasonable characters in
Wonderland. He listens to Alice and becomes something of a friend to her.
White Rabbit - A nervous character of somewhat important rank (though not aristocratic) in
Wonderland. He generally is in a hurry. He is capable and sure of himself in his job, even to the
point of contradicting the King.
Queen of Hearts - A monstrous, violently domineering woman. She seems to hold the
ultimate authority in Wonderland, although her continuous death sentences are never actually
carried out, leading us to conclude that she is at least partly delusional.
King of Hearts - An incompetent and ineffectual ruler almost entirely dominated by his wife.
He is self-centered, stubborn and generally unlikable.
Duchess - An odd, spiteful woman who mistreats her baby and submits to a shower of abuse
from her cook. She is horribly ugly. In her anxiety to remain in the good graces of the queen, she
can be superficially sweet to someone she thinks can aid her socially while simultaneously
causing her the utmost discomfort.
Mad Hatter - The crazy hat-seller trapped in a perpetual tea-time. He is often impolite and
seemingly fond of confusing people. He reappears in Looking Glass as one of the Anglo-Saxon
messengers.
March Hare - The Mad Hatter's friend and companion, equally crazy and discourteous. He
also reappears as an Anglo-Saxon messenger.
Dormouse - The Hare and the Hatter's lethargic, much-abused companion.
Caterpillar - Hookah-smoking insect who gives Alice the means to change size at will. He is
severe and somewhat unfriendly, but at least he offers assistance.
Through the Looking Glass Red Queen - Domineering and often unpleasant, but not
incapable of civility. She expects Alice to abide by her rules of proper etiquette, even when it
should be apparent that she does not know what is happening.
White Queen - Sweet, but fairly stupid. She allows herself to be dominated in the presence of
her red counterpart.
Red King - Asleep. Tweedledum and Tweedledee claim that he is the dreaming architect of
Looking-Glass world as we know it.
White King - Bumbling and ineffectual, but not altogether unpleasant. He honors his promise
to send all of his horses and all of his men with amazing swiftness when Humpty Dumpty
(presumably) falls off his wall.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee - Two little fat brothers dressed as schoolboys who are
fond of dancing and poetry. They are very affectionate with one another, but fight over an
extremely trivial matter. They are petty and cowardly.
Humpty Dumpty - A pompous and easily-offended sort who fancies himself a master of
words. He is rude and foolish and deserves what he gets.
White Knight - Kind, gentle, and strangely noble, despite his extreme clumsiness. He tries to
be very clever, but fails in the end. He is terribly sentimental and enjoys Alice's company
immensely. He often is read as Carroll's parody of himself.
Alice in Wonderland: Chapter 1In the introductory poem, Carroll recreates the story of a boat trip
with three girl on the river where he first created the Alice stories.
As the book opens, Alice, bored and sleepy, sits on the riverbank with her sister. She sees a White
Rabbit run by, wearing a waistcoat and carrying a watch and talking about his lateness. She gets
up and runs after him and follows him down a rabbit-hole. She falls down a deep well inside the
rabbit-hole, the sides of which are furnished with cupboards and shelves. She falls for a long time
and postulates that she may fall right through the earth. Just as she begins to doze off and dream
of having a conversation with her cat, she lands on a pile of dry leaves and sticks. Unhurt, she
sees the White Rabbit running off along a corridor and chases after him. She loses track of him
and finds herself in a long, low hall full of locked doors. She finds a little key on a glass table and
finds that it fits a tiny door behind a curtain leading to a lovely garden.
Alice cannot fit through the doorway, but she muses that perhaps she might shut herself up like a
telescope if only she knew how. She returns to the table and finds a bottle there labeled "DRINK
ME." Finding the taste a very pleasant mixture of odd flavors, quickly she finishes the liquid in
the bottle and shrinks to a size suitable to walk through the door into the garden. She finds that
she has left the key on the tabletop, however, and can no longer open the door, so she sits down
and cries. She finds a glass box containing a cake with "EAT ME" written on it in currants and
eats it.
Commentary
. The three children in the boat are the Liddell sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith. Alice, Carroll's
clear favorite, is here referred to as Secunda, as she is the second oldest (Carroll is employing the
Latin method of numbering girls). Also present that day was Carroll's friend, the Reverend E.
Robinson Duckworth, who appears later in the story (at the caucus-race) as a duck. Carroll was
often in the habit of inventing stories for the girls on their frequent rowing trips up the Thames; it
was only at Alice's insistence that he eventually turned this story into a book.
At the opening of the first chapter, Alice looks into her sister's book and is annoyed to find that it
contains no pictures or conversations. Carroll caters amply to the child's wishes by filling his
book with whimsical conversations and illustrations by the famous Punch magazine cartoonist,
John Tenniel.Carroll gradually builds the absurdity of the story with a masterful touch, first with
the unremarkable event of the White Rabbit running by; next, with the addition of its agitated (yet
strangely human) speech, which Alice fails to recognize as unusual at first; and finally, with the
White Rabbit's reading a watch which he takes out of his waistcoat-pocket. The encounter with
the White Rabbit highlights the sluggish workings of Alice's heat-addled brain, which recognizes
things gradually (focusing, for example, on the waist-coat pocket and the watch instead of the
larger fact that the rabbit is clothed). This technique also allows for a more acceptable transition
from the real to the unreal. Alice is quick to act and throws herself impetuously down the rabbithole, "never once considering how in the world she was to get out again." In this way, the
opening provides something of a guide for readers. Like Alice, the reader must suspend disbelief,
accept each detail for its particular charm, and plunge headlong into the unfamiliar without
lingering on ties to the everyday world. As she falls, Alice shows remarkable composure and
presence of mind by placing the empty marmalade jar on a shelf as she falls to avoid hitting
someone below. Carroll shows for the first time here the dark edge of his humor with his
parenthetical affirmation of Alice's statement, "Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I

fell off the top of the house!" The narrator agrees that this is "very likely true," implying that she
would not say anything because she would be dead (this is the first of many death jokes in the
two books).
The narrator pokes fun at Alice's tendency to show off her intelligence as she attempts to figure
out how close she is to the center of the earth as she falls, and uses the words "latitude" and
"longitude" without knowing what they mean because "she thought they were nice grand words
to say." She continues to show the superficial nature of her knowledge as she speculates that she
will fall right through the earth and come out among the people who walk with their heads
downwards, whom she calls "antipathies." She is grateful that no one is around to hear that she
does not know exactly what she is talking about. She shows herself to be very concerned with
etiquette as she attempts to curtsey as she falls (Carroll addresses the reader parenthetically here
to ask if he--or presumably she--could manage a thing like that), and decides that she cannot ask
what country she is in when she gets there for fear of appearing ignorant.
Things immediately take on a dream-like quality inside the rabbit hole. Even the landscape shifts
about: things such as the curtain and the "drink me" bottle appear out of nowhere. Alice
demonstrates the incompleteness of her common sense, gleaned from stories about children who
came to nasty ends, by not remembering simple rules their friends taught them about red-hot
pokers, knives, and poison. Carroll touches again on death with Alice's musings on what would
happen if she continued to shrink and went out like a candle; she then tries to imagine what a
candle flame looks like after being extinguished. Alice quickly adapts to the rules of Wonderland,
and is even disappointed when she doesn't change immediately after eating a little of the cake, as
she has come to expect strangeness and regards regular things as "dull and stupid."
Alice grows to over nine feet tall and muses that she will have to send shoes as presents to her
feet by mail. She returns to the garden door and finds passing through even more hopeless than
ever. She begins to cry and creates a pool of tears in the hall. The White Rabbit approaches
hurriedly, finely dressed and muttering about how savage the Duchess will be if he keeps her
waiting. He is startled and runs away when Alice asks him for help. Alice picks up his gloves and
fan, which he dropped, and begins to fan herself. She sits and wonders what it is that has made
this day so different from every other. She decides she must have been changed into someone else
in the night. She thinks of all the children her age she knows and decides she must be a poor girl
named Mabel, for she cannot remember her multiplication tables or geography correctly, or recite
a poem properly. She decides she does not want to be Mabel and that she will stay down in the
hole if anyone calls for her until she can be someone more to her liking.
Just as she begins to feel very lonely, she realizes that the fan she has been holding has been
causing her to shrink and quickly drops it. She runs back to the garden door, only to find it shut
again and the key out of reach on the table once more. She slips and is immersed in the pool of
tears. She asks a Mouse for help, and decides it must be French when it doesn't answer. She uses
the first sentence from her French lesson-book, "Where is my cat?" and frightens the mouse,
which protests in English that it does not like cats. She offends it when she talks affectionately of
her cat, and again when she changes the subject to a neighbor's dog. Finally, she promises not to
talk of dogs or cats to keep the Mouse from swimming off angrily. The Mouse promises to tell its
history and Alice leads a band of birds and animals that had fallen into the pool to the shore. The
animals gather on shore, and Alice converses familiarly with them about how best to get dry.
The Mouse, which seems to have some authority, begins to recite a very dry history of William
the Conqueror. The Dodo soon gets up and suggests a Caucus-race to dry-off. The Caucus-race is
a confused affair with no clear beginning or end (until the Dodo arbitrarily announces one after
everyone has stopped), and no one knows who has won until the Dodo announces that everyone
has, and everyone must have prizes. They look to Alice for these, so she distributes comfits which
she finds in her pocket. The Mouse declares that she must have her own prize, but all Alice has
left is a thimble, which the Dodo ceremoniously presents to her. The Mouse begins to tell its long
and sad tale, which Alice's mind shapes into the image of its physical tail. It becomes angry and

storms off when it realizes that she is not really paying attention. The rest of the party disperses
hastily when Alice begins talking about her cat, Dinah, again, and how good Dinah is at catching
birds and mice.
Alice is terribly concerned that she has lost her identity and become a poor girl with few toys, so
she decides to wait and hopes that she will eventually become someone else. The idea of losing
her identity is less painful to her than the prospect of losing her social status. Questions of class
were very important in Victorian England, and Carroll himself was something of a snob. Alice's
frequent struggles with issues of identity, especially when tied to physical change, could also be
interpreted as representative of every child's search for self as he or she passes into adulthood.
Alice's recitation of "How Doth the Little Crocodile" is a parody of theologian and hymn-writer
Isaac Watts' poem, "Against Idleness and Mischief," which begins, "How doth the little busy
bee." This is the first of Carroll's many brilliant parodies of the overly educational children's
literature of the day.
The hall has now vanished as Alice sees the White Rabbit approach, searching for his gloves and
fan. The Rabbit mistakes her for his maid, Mary Ann, and sends her to fetch a pair of gloves and a
fan from his house. She goes into a house with a brass plate on the door which reads: "W.
RABBIT," and finds the gloves and fan, along with a bottle. She drinks from it and begins to
grow rapidly, and soon fills the whole house. The Rabbit comes angrily looking for Mary Ann,
and Alice knocks him down with her hand when he tries to get through the window. He calls for
Pat and tells him to get the arm out of his window, and they soon collect a number of others with
equipment to help. They send the lizard, Bill, down the chimney, but Alice kicks him back up and
out. They throw a barrowful of pebbles in through the window at her, which change into cakes as
they lie on the floor. She eats one and shrinks down small enough to get through the door. She
runs off past the group of animals into a wood, where she finds a puppy. She is now much smaller
than it, and narrowly avoids being trampled as it tries to play with her. She runs off, determined to
grow back to her proper size and find her way to the garden.
Alice looks about for something to eat or drink, and finds a large mushroom, with a large blue
Caterpillar sitting on top smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar asks Alice who she is, and she replies
that she does not know anymore. The Caterpillar demands for her to explain herself. She replies
that she cannot because she is so confused by all the changes she has been through. They have a
brief conversation, in which the Caterpillar shows himself to be quite testy and demanding When
Alice complains that she keeps changing size and cannot remember things anymore, the
caterpillar tells her to recite "You are old, Father William." She unintentionally recites a parody of
the intended poem, and the caterpillar declares that it is entirely wrong. He asks her what size she
would like to be, argues with her a little more, smokes silently for awhile, and then tells her that
one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter, as he
crawls away into the grass.
She tries the mushroom, and ends up shrinking and then extending violently, until her head and
neck shoot far above the treetops and is mistaken by a pigeon for a serpent in search of eggs.
Alice remarks hesitatingly that she is a little girl. The pigeon doesn't believe her and argues that
little girls must be a kind of serpent anyway if they eat eggs. Eventually, Alice manages to shrink
back to her proper height and sets off to find the garden. She comes across a little house and
shrinks herself down to nine inches to approach it.
Critical AnalysisWonderland's dreamy quality re-emerges with the sudden disappearance of the
hall. Alice has mixed feelings about Wonderland. She is adapting well, after figuring-out the
relation between eating and drinking and changing size. But all this change has become tiresome,
she is intimidated by the creatures and tired of being ordered around. At the same time, she finds
her situation peculiarly interesting and decides there should be a book about her.
The question of what it means to grow up arises again. (The first time was when Alice told
herself, in the previous section, that such a "great girl" like her should not be crying--"great"
meaning both mature and, literally, large). Alice's odd habit of pretending to be two people and

having conversations with herself allows her to see both sides of an issue, and perhaps helps to
keep her calm and open-minded (even when she does not take the advice she gives herself).
Alice's confusion about her identity, induced by all her changes in size, comes to the forefront
once again when the Caterpillar demands to know who she is, and also in her confrontation with
the pigeon when she hesitates even to say she is a little girl.The connection between physical
changes and identity again brings to mind Alice's struggle with issues of self as she passes into
adulthood. In contrast, the Caterpillar, a traditional symbol of change (as Alice herself points out),
claims that physical change has no disorienting effect on him. Alice's growth is more an extension
than a simple enlargement (i.e. she stretches out, as opposed to becoming a giant), and it grants
her unforeseen abilities, as when she finds she can twist her neck around like a snake. The
Caterpillar's seeming knowledge of what Alice is thinking is believable, given that this is all a
dream; the Caterpillar is merely a part of Alice's psyche. "You Are Old, Father William" is a
parody of "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them" by Robert Southey.
The house belongs to the Duchess. The footman (who happens to be a frog) tells Alice not to
knock and that he plans to sit there on the doorstep for the next few days or so. The door opens
and a plate flies out and grazes the footman's nose. Alice enters through the door into a smokefilled kitchen, and sees the Duchess nursing a baby while the Cook stirs a cauldron of soup. The
air is full of pepper, which causes everyone but the Cook and a large grinning cat to sneeze, while
the Duchess' baby howls continuously. Alice asks why the cat grins, and the Duchess explains
that it is a Cheshire-Cat, before screaming "Pig!" at the baby in her arms. Alice tries to start up a
conversation about how she had no idea that cats could grin, and the Duchess tells her she must
not know much. The Cook takes the cauldron off the fire and starts throwing everything in her
reach at the Duchess and the baby. Alice protests, and the Duchess growls that the world would
go around much faster if everyone minded his own business. Alice seizes the opportunity to show
off her knowledge by explaining how that would make the night and day go by too quickly with
the motion of the earth on its axis.
The Duchess hears the word "axes" and orders Alice's beheading. The cook pays no attention, and
the Duchess begins to sing a brutal lullaby to the baby, shaking him and tossing him about the
whole while. Afterward, she leaves to get ready to play croquet and hurls the baby at Alice to
nurse. Alice has trouble holding it, and it changes into a pig in her arms and runs off. She asks the
Cheshire-Cat which way she should go. He informs her that in one direction she will find a Hatter
and, in the other, she will find the March Hare, both of whom are mad. The Cheshire-Cat argues
that everyone there is mad, including Alice and himself. He says she will see him later if she
plays croquet with the Queen, then disappears. He reappears, a moment later, to ask what
happened to the baby. When she tells him that the baby turned into a pig, he says he expected as
much and vanishes again.
Alice turns toward the March Hare's house, when the Cheshire-Cat reappears and asks if she said
"pig" or "fig." Alice arrives at the March Hare's house (after eating a little more of the enlarging
mushroom) and finds the Hare and the Hatter sitting at a large table outside, drinking tea with a
Dormouse--which they use as a cushion-- asleep between them. They yell, "No room! No room!"
as Alice approaches, but she sits down in one of the many empty chairs, anyway.The Hare offers
her some wine, and when she protests that it is uncivil to offer wine when there is none, he replies
that it wasn't very civil of her to sit down uninvited. The Hatter tells her she needs a haircut. Alice
is unable to answer the riddle, and the Hatter asks her what day of the month it is. When she
replies "the fourth" (she previously has said the month is "May"), he looks at his watch, which
tells the day of the month but not the time, and laments that it is two days off. He complains to
the Hare that the butter was not good for its works, as some crumbs must have gotten into it when
he put it in with the bread-knife. The Hare gloomily dips it into his tea.
Alice remarks how odd it is to have a watch that tells the day of the month but not the hour. The
Hatter asks if her watch tells the year, to which she replies, "Of course not," and he retorts that his
is the same way, which she does not understand. The Hatter asks if she has the answer to the

riddle. She says no, and the Hatter and the Hare say they don't know, either. She says they
shouldn't waste time by asking riddles with no answers. The Hare replies that Time is a "him" and
not an "it." Alice doesn't understand this either, but remarks that she has to beat time when she
learns music. The Hatter says Time doesn't like to be beaten and explains that, if she were on
better terms with him, he would do whatever she liked with the clock. The Hatter tells her that he
quarreled with Time, last March, when he sang "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat" at the Queen's
concert, and now he keeps it perpetually at six o'clock, tea-time, so that they must always have
the things out for tea and never have time to wash them.They wake the Dormouse and make him
tell them a story. He tells the story of three sisters who lived at the bottom of a well, living on
treacle (molasses) and learning to draw things that start with M. Alice interrupts him periodically,
and her three hosts subject her to a continual barrage of verbal abuse. Finally, she becomes
offended and walks off. She finds a tree with a door in it, through which she finds the long hall
with the glass table. She takes the key, eats a bit of the reducing mushroom, and goes through the
door into the garden.
Alice says she is glad that she now knows what the word means, as if she had heard the
parenthetical comment herself (although her response could conceivably have been to someone in
the courtroom using the word and then seeing the subsequent action). Alice gains courage as she
grows, her confidence tied to physical power. The mechanics of Alice's dream become apparent in
the last chapter, as fragments of her dream-world are given real counterparts. She equates the
upset jurors with the earlier real-life event of upsetting a bowl of goldfish, and the shower of
falling cards turns out to be a flutter of dead leaves that had fallen into her face. As Alice's sister
relives her dream, the sounds of the farm yard become the sounds of Wonderland; presumably the
same process took place for Alice while she was dreaming.As the book closes, Alice's sister
imagines her growing up to entertain her children with stories drawn from the simple and loving
heart of childhood.

These passages share the same theme, that times past are irretrievably lost but haunt our
memory forever. The time frame of this nostalgic (and slightly morbid) theme is not
exactly the same in each passage: Carroll's nostalgia is that of an adult for childhood (and
specifically, the father figure represented by the older, "kindly" Knight), and while
Dickens' nostalgia is that of an "old man" for "the pleasures of his youth," the implication
seems to be that of an early adulthood or middle age (as the Pickwickians are in the
middle of). But both passages share a similar and somewhat unusual structure -- they skip
ahead in time to predict a future nostalgia from present events. Carroll's nostalgia comes
"years afterwards," Dickens' takes place "many miles distant." And both ultimately
portray this "melancholy" remembrance as positive, if bittersweet.
This bittersweet characterization of nostalgia is brought about through remarkably similar
imagery in the two passages. Both Dickens and Carroll concentrate on images of light:
Carroll describes "the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in
a blaze," Dickens mentions "the looks that shone so brightly...the eyes we sought, their
lustre." Carroll's image is explicitly that of a sunset, and Dickens' implies the same, with
looks that "have ceased to glow" and eyes that "hid their lustre." In addition to this sunset
imagery, both passages have foreboding images that predict the loss of this happy time.
Carroll describes the "black shadows of the forest," and Dickens' descriptions all end in
death -- "grown cold," "in the grave." Both passages contrast the positive and the
negative imagery to create the bittersweet effect attributed to nostalgia.

Both Charlotte Bront and Lewis Carroll infuse their work with elements of the fantastic:
a fact evident in both Jane Eyre and Alice in Wonderland. However, a common use of
the fantastic does not mean these authors strive for identical imaginative effects. From the
moment Alice falls down the hole into Wonderland, many realistic constraints do not
apply to her, not even the law of gravity. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, a great fall brings her
no harm; in fact she has sufficient time to observe her surroundings while she tumbles. To
represent the discombobulating nature of the way children experience life, Carroll creates
an entire world in which reality appears slippery. Children move in and out of fairy tales.
Indeed, they move in and out of their own skins, in a way that simply cannot be
explained. In part, Carroll uses the fantastic in Alice in Wonderland to highlight the
absurdity that underlies many supposedly rational adult behaviors.
Bront incorporates fantastic elements into a more realistic narrative structure by
weaving in references to fairy tales, prophetic dreams, mythic imagery and extraordinary
plot twists. In part, she uses the fantastic to inform the reader of concealed emotional
subtexts in the novel. Her prophetic dreams provide the reader with vital information
regarding the state of Jane's emotional health. This use of the fantastic pplays a major role
in Jane Eyre , which is not merely a parable or morality tale: Jane's success as a
Bildungsroman heroine depends upon satisfying her emotional and spiritual needs, in
addition to securing the safe domestic environment requisite at that time for female
survival. Bront's departure from a realistic plot might derive from Emotionalist moral
philosophy, a school of moral philosophy which significantly affected nineteenth-century
intellectual life in Britain. Bront uses the fantastic to expand the parameters of societal
conceptions of what is comprised by reality. Landow notes the implications of these
ideas, "For psychology and theories of human nature: for the first time, philosophers no
longer urged that the healthy human mind is organized hierarchically with reason, like a
king, ruling will and passions. Reason now shares rule with feelings or emotions." By
elevating the importance of emotion in Jane's maturation, Bront creates a
Bildungsroman not exclusively rooted in mastery of the external world, but focused as
well on the vitality of the interior life.
Education plays a large role in the Alice books, contributing both to Carroll's
characterization of Alice and to our perceptions of Victorian England. Throughout the
Alice books, as in this passage, Alice refers to her lessons and her education, usually very
proud of the learning that she has acquired. It seems, however, that the information that
she remembers from her lessons is usually either completely useless or wrong. For
example, although she can remember the how many miles down until the center of the
earth, she mistakenly believes that everything will be upside down when she passes
through to the other side.
Lewis Carroll seems implicitly to criticise Victorian attitudes towards race, gender, and
class throughout Through the Looking Glass. For example, he both created all of
Wonderland's characters with a degree of equality and then demonstrates the absurdity of
stereotyping in Alice's trek through the "wood where things have no names" when Alice
and the fawn "walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms wrapped
lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and
here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm.

"I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And, dear me! you're a human child!" A
sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had
darted away at full speed (Chapter 3). While in the forest, they are blind to names and can
find comfort in each other. As soon as Alice and the Fawn leave the forest, however, the
Fawn recognizes Alice for what she is -- a human child -- and it scurries away in fear.
Carroll makes his point that, as in Victorian England, distinctions were drawn not upon
knowledge, but upon ignorance and a label.

Style

Parody
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was originally told to entertain a little girl. One of the
devices Lewis Carroll uses to communicate with Alice Liddell is parody, which adopts
the style of the serious literary work and applies it to an inappropriate subject for
humorous effect. Most of the songs and poems that appear in the book are parodies of
well-known Victorian poems, such as Robert Southey's "The Old Man's Comforts and
How He Gained Them" ("You Are Old, Father William"), Isaac Watts's "How Doth the
Little Busy Bee" ("How Doth the Little Crocodile"), and Mary Howett's "The Spider and
the Fly" ("Will You Walk a Little Faster"). Several of the songs were ones that Carroll
had heard the Liddell sisters sing, so he knew that Alice, for whom the story was written,
would appreciate them. There are also a number of "inside jokes" that might make sense
only to the Liddells or Carroll's closest associates. The Mad Hatter's song, for instance,
("Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat") is a parody of Jane Taylor's poem "The Star," but it also
contains a reference to the Oxford community. "Bartholomew Price," writes Martin
Gardner in his The Annotated Alice, "a distinguished professor of mathematics at Oxford
and a good friend of Carroll's, was known among his student by the nickname 'The Bat.'
His lectures no doubt had a way of soaring high above the heads of his listeners."
What makes Carroll's parodies so special that they have outlived the originals they mock
is the fact that they are excellent humorous verses in their own right. They also serve a
purpose within the book: they emphasize the underlying senselessness of Wonderland and
highlight Alice's own sense of displacement. Many of them Alice recites herself under
pressure from another character. "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster" is a parody of the didactic
poem "The Sluggard" by Isaac Watts. It is notable that most often Alice is cut off by the
same characters that require her to recite in the first place.
Narrator
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens with Alice's complaint, "For what is the use of a
book without pictures or conversations?" So most of the story is told through pictures and
dialogue. However, there is another voice besides those of Alice and the characters she
encounters. The third-person ("he/she/it") narrator of the story maintains a point of view
that is very different from that of the heroine. The narrator steps in to explain Alice's

thoughts to the reader. The narrator explains who Dinah is, for instance, and also
highlights Alice's own state of mind. He frequently refers to Alice as "poor Alice" or "the
poor little thing" whenever she is in a difficult situation.
Point of View
Although the narrator has an impartial voice, the point of view is very strongly connected
with Alice. Events are related as they happen to her and are explained as they affect her.
As a result, some critics believe that the narrator is not in fact a separate voice, but is a
part of Alice's own thought process. They base this interpretation on the statement in
Chapter 1 that Alice "was very fond of pretending to be two people." Alice, they suggest,
con-sists of the thoughtless child who carelessly jumps down the rabbit-hole after the
White Rabbit, and the well-brought-up, responsible young girl who remembers her
manners even when confronted by rude people and animals.
Language
Part of the way Carroll shows Wonderland to be a strange place is the way the inhabitants
twist the meaning of words. Carroll plays with language by including many puns and
other forms of word play. In Chapter 3, for instance, the Mouse says he can dry everyone
who was caught in the pool of tears. He proceeds to recite a bit of history "the driest
thing I know." Here, of course, the Mouse means "dry" as in dull; the Mouse's words
have no ability to ease the dampness of the creatures. When Alice meets the Mad Hatter
and the March Hare, they play with syntax the order of words to confuse Alice.
When she says "I say what I mean" is the same thing as "I mean what I say," the others
immediately contradict her by bringing up totally unrelated examples: "'Not the same
thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same
thing as "I eat what I see"!'" The power of language is also evident in the way Alice
continually offends the inhabitants of Wonderland, often quite unintentionally. For
instance, she drives away the creatures at the pool of tears just by mentioning the word
"cat." Eventually Alice learns to be careful of what she says, as in Chapter 8 when she
changes how she is about to describe the Queen after noticing the woman behind her
shoulder.

Lewis Carroll [pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

(1832-1898)
http://www.online-literature.com/carroll/

Born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in Cheshire, on January 27, 1832, the man who would
become Lewis Carroll was an eccentric and an eclectic whose varied works have
entertained, edified, enlightened, and evaded readers for over a century. The son of a
vicar and his first cousin, Dodgson was a precocious child who showed early interest in
both writing and mathematics. After studying mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford,
from 1850-1854, Dodgson was appointed to a lectureship there, where he was to continue
studying, remain unmarried, and prepare for holy orders for almost 30 years. Although he
never reached the priesthood, he did reach the level of deacon. During his very successful
academic career, he wrote extensively on mathematics and logic, among other subjects.
However, it is not for his academic work that he is best remembered, but rather the works
for children which he created under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
Dodgson's relationship to children has been questioned by recent scholarship, as his
photography of young girls is undeniably erotic, and all his close and enduring
friendships throughout his life were with young children, mostly girls. Dodgson was
intensely interested in and an advocate for the freedom and wisdom of childhood, and
wrote his books as pleasurable amusements for he people he admired. His muse, Alice
Liddell was the young daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, who he wrote Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland for in 1865. The work started out as an oral tale which he later
wrote down as Alice's Adventures Underground, but later revised into Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland. In 1872, Carroll published Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to
Wonderland. The books were illustrated by Sir John Tenniel, a top political illustrator of
the day, whose crisp etchings work with Carroll's sly text to create the world of
Wonderland still known today. These books brought Carroll great fame and renown
during his lifetime, but the shy Dodgson made a great effort to distance himself from the
fame of his alterego Carroll. An intensely awkward and introverted man, he was almost
unable to have interactions or friendships with adults, but was happy and at peace when
around children. He spent most of his later years in the company of young children who
he entertained with his stories and documented in his famous photography.
Along with the Alice books, Carroll published Phantasmagoria and Other Poems in 1869,
The Hunting of the Snark in 1876, and Sylvie and Bruno in 1893, though none of his
other works were ever nearly as popular as the Alice duo either in his lifetime or
afterwards. He died January 14, 1898 in Guilford, Surrey.

Context
Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in
mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived from 1832 to 1898. Carrolls physical
deformities, partial deafness, and irrepressible stammer made him an unlikely candidate
for producing one of the most popular and enduring childrens fantasies in the English
language. Carrolls unusual appearance caused him to behave awkwardly around other
adults, and his students at Oxford saw him as a stuffy and boring teacher. He held strict
religious beliefs, serving as a deacon in the Anglican Church for many years and briefly
considering becoming a minister. Underneath Carrolls awkward exterior, however, lay a
brilliant and imaginative artist. A gifted amateur photographer, he took numerous
portraits of children throughout his adulthood. Carrolls keen grasp of mathematics and
logic inspired the linguistic humor and witty wordplay in his stories. Additionally, his
unique understanding of childrens minds allowed him to compose imaginative fiction
that appealed to young people.
Carroll felt shy and reserved around adults but became animated and lively around
children. His crippling stammer melted away in the company of children as he told them
his elaborately nonsensical stories. Carroll discovered his gift for storytelling in his own
youth when he served as the unofficial family entertainer for his five younger sisters and
three younger brothers. He staged performances and wrote the bulk of the fiction in the
family magazine. As an adult, Carroll continued to prefer the companionship of children
to adults and tended to favor little girls. Over the course of his lifetime he made
numerous child friends whom he wrote to frequently and often mentioned in his diaries.
In 1856, Carroll became close with the Liddell children and met the girl who would
become the inspiration for Alice, the protagonist of his two most famous books. It was in
that year that classics scholar Henry George Liddell accepted an appointment as Dean of
Christ Church, one of the colleges that comprise Oxford University, and brought his three
daughters to live with him at Oxford. Lorina, Alice, and Edith Liddell quickly became
Carrolls favorite companions and photographic subjects. During their frequent afternoon
boat trips on the river, Carroll told the Liddells fanciful tales. Alice quickly became
Carrolls favorite of the three girls, and he made her the subject of the stories that would
later became Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Almost
ten years after first meeting the Liddells, Carroll compiled the stories and submitted the
completed manuscript for publication.
Alices Adventures in Wonderland received mostly negative reviews when first published
in 1865. Critics and readers alike found the book to be sheer nonsense, and one critic
sneered that the book was too extravagantly absurd to produce more diversion than
disappointment and irritation. Only John Tenniels detailed illustrations garnered praise,
and his images continue to appear in most reprints of the Alice books. Despite the books
negative reception, Carroll proposed a sequel to his publisher in 1866 and set to work
writing Through the Looking-Glass. By the time the second book reached publication in
1871, Alices Adventures in Wonderland had found an appreciative readership. Over
time, Carrolls combination of sophisticated logic, social satire, and pure fantasy would
make the book a classic for children and adults alike. Critics eventually recognized the
literary merits of both texts, and celebrated authors and philosophers ranging from James
Joyce to Ludwig Wittgenstein praised Carrolls stories.

In 1881, Carroll resigned from his position as mathematics lecturer at Oxford to pursue
writing full time. He composed numerous poems, several new works for children, and
books of logic puzzles and games, but none of his later writings attained the success of
the Alice books. Carroll continued to have close friendships with children. Several of his
child friends served as inspiration for the Sylvie and Bruno books. Like the Alice stories,
Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1898) relied heavily on
childrens silly sayings and absurd fantasies. Carroll died in 1898 at the age of sixty-six,
soon after the publication of the Sylvie and Bruno books. He passed away in his familys
home in Guildford, England.
Carrolls sudden break with the Liddell family in the early 1860s has led to a great deal of
speculation over the nature of his relationship with Alice Liddell. Some books indicate
that the split resulted from a disagreement between Carroll and Dean Liddell over Christ
Church matters. Other evidence indicates that more insidious elements existed in
Carrolls relationships with young children and with Alice Liddell in particular. This
possibility seems to be supported by the fact that Mrs. Liddell burned all of Carrolls
early letters to Alice and that Carroll himself tore pages out of his diary related to the
break. However, no concrete evidence exists that Carroll behaved inappropriately in his
numerous friendships with children. Records written by Carrolls associates and Alice
Liddell herself do not indicate any untoward behavior on his part.
Carrolls feelings of intense nostalgia for the simple pleasures of childhood caused him to
feel deep discomfort in the presence of adults. In the company of children, Carroll felt
understood and could temporarily forget the loss of innocence that he associated with his
own adulthood. Ironically, Carroll mourned this loss again and again as he watched each
of his child friends grow away from him as they became older. As he wrote in a letter to
the mother of one of his young muses, It is very sweet to me, to be loved by her as
children love: though the experience of many years have now taught me that there are
few things in the world so evanescent [fleeting] as a childs love. Nine-tenths of the
children, whose love once seemed as warm as hers, are now merely on the terms of
everyday acquaintance. The sentiment of fleeting happiness pervades Carrolls
seemingly lighthearted fantasies and infuses the Alice books with melancholy and loss.

About Alice in Wonderland

The Alice books were written during the Victorian era, a time now remembered for its
stifling propriety and constrictive morals. Carroll had something of an outsider's
perspective on this world; he was painfully shy, and he often stuttered. His fondness for
little girls has raised more than a few eyebrows, although it is unknown if Carroll ever
acted on this obsession. At any rate, these feelings of his served to accentuate his feelings
of isolation.
But his position gave him tremendous perspective on his world. The creatures of
wonderland have many arbitrary customs. Their behaviors are all defensible with strange

logic, but the customs are still silly or even cruel. There are obvious echoes of the
Victorian world, as the animals are opinionated and have strong ideas about what
constitutes appropriate behavior. The creatures' preciousness and their arbitrary
sensitivities mock the fastidiousness of the Victorian era.
The Alice books also mock the children's literature of the day. In keeping with the
character of the time, children's literature was full of simplistic morals and heavy-handed
attempts to educate the young. Some of the books supposedly for children were quite dry,
and at the least suffered from a lack of imagination.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865, and it was an immediate
success. Carroll's sense of the absurd and his amazing gift for games of logic and
language have made the Alice books popular with both adults and children, and they have
remained some of the best-known children's books written in English. The well-known
Disney adaptation draws freely from both books, while retaining the basic structure of the
first book and remaining faithful to the flavor and central themes of the story.
The Alice books deal with the sometimes precarious world of children; the reader should
keep in mind that at the time of their writing, the advent of industrialization had raised
people's consciousness of child labor and exploitation. Carroll sees the world of children
as a dangerous place, shadowed by the threat of death and the presence of adults who are
powerful but often absurd.
The book is refreshingly complex, refusing to take patronize its young audience with
simplistic morals or perspectives. A point of comparison is Antoine de St. Exup?ry's The
Little Prince: while the The Little Prince sets up a rather simplistic binary between
children (who are good, wise and innocent) and "the big people" (who are mean, shallow,
and foolish), the Alice books satirize the absurdities of adults while avoiding pat
conclusions about the difference between adults and children. Childhood is seen as a state
of danger, and although Carroll has an evident fondness for children he never idealizes
them. Alice's challenge is to grow into a strong and compassionate person despite the
idiosyncrasies of the creatures she meets (the creatures symbolizing the adult world). She
has to learn the rules of each new encounter, but in the end she must also retain a sense of
justice and develop a sense of herself. Rather than set childhood and adulthood as simple
opposites, valorizing the former and disparaging the latter, Carroll shows the process by
which a good child can become a strong adult. Alice is also not without "adult" friends
along the way: in the first book, for example, the Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat are two
enigmatic creatures who seem to understand how Wonderland works. They help Alice at
key points.
The books always retain a sense of mystery and a fondness for the sinister; even the
characters who aid Alice have a dark edge to them. The hints of mortality and the sense
of fear in the books have only contributed to their popularity. The books stand as
evidence that children's literature need not talk down to its audience. In fact, it is the
depth and sophistication of the Alice books that has won them recognition as some of the
best children's literature ever written.

Character List
Alice: The heroine of the story. Her adventures begin with her fateful jump down the
rabbit hole, and the tale is an extended metaphor for the challenges she will face as she
grows into an adult. She possesses unusual composure for a child, and she seems bright
but makes many charming mistakes. She grows more confident as the book progresses.
White Rabbit: Alice's adventures begin when she follows the White Rabbit down the
rabbit-hole. He is a messenger and a herald at the Court of the King and Queen of Hearts.
He wears a waist-coat and carries a pocket watch.
Mouse: Alice meets the mouse while swimming in the pool of tears. He hates cats and
dogs, and he begins to tell Alice a disturbing story about being put on trial. He is very
sensitive.
Bill: A lizard in the service of the White Rabbit. When Alice is a giant and stuck in the
White Rabbit's house, she kicks Bill out of the chimney. Bill is also one of the jurors at
the trial at the end of the book.
Caterpillar: Wise, enigmatic, and unshakably mellow, the Caterpillar gives Alice some
valuable advice about how to get by in Wonderland. He smokes a hookah and sits on a
mushroom. He gives Alice the valuable gift of the mushroom (one side making her
bigger, and the other making her small), which gives her control of her size in
Wonderland.
The Pigeon: The Pigeon is afraid for her eggs, and mistakes Alice for a serpent. Alice
tries to reason with her, but the Pigeon forces her away.
Duchess: When Alice first meets the Duchess, she is a disagreeable woman nursing a
baby and arguing with her cook. Later, she is put under sentence of execution. The
Duchess seems different when Alice meets her a second time, later in the book, and Alice
notices that the Duchess speaks only in pat morals.
Cook: Argumentative, and convinced that pepper is the key ingredient in all food. She
first appears at the house of the Duchess, where she is throwing everything in sight at the
Duchess and the baby. Later, she is a witness at the trial of the Knave of Hearts.
Baby: The baby the Duchess nurses. Alice is concerned about leaving the child in such a
violent environment, so she takes him with her. He turns into a pig.
Cheshire Cat: Possessing remarkably sharp claws and alarming sharp teeth, the Cheshire
cat is courteous and helpful, despite his frightening appearance. His face is fixed in an
eerie grin. He can make any and all parts of his body disappear and reappear.
Hatter: A madman who sits always at tea, every since Time stopped working for him. He
takes his tea with the March Hare and the Dormouse. Alice is temporarily their guest,

although she finds the event to be the stupidest tea party she has ever attended. Later, the
nervous hatter is forced to be a witness at the trial.
March Hare: Playing with the expression, "Mad as a March Hare," Carroll puts him in
the company of the mad Hatter and the narcoleptic Dormouse. Their strange tea party is
at the March Hare's house.
The Dormouse: Another guest at the mad tea party. He can't seem to stay awake. He is
also one of the observers at the trial.
Two, Five, and Seven: These three unfortunate gardeners are struggling to repaint the
Queen's roses, as they planted white roses by mistake and now fear for their lives. Like
the other people working for the queen, they are shaped like playing cards. When the
Queen orders their beheading, Alice hides them.
Queen of Hearts: Nasty, brutal, and loud, the Queen delights in ordering executions,
although everyone seems to get pardoned in the end. The people of Wonderland are
terrified of her. Although Alice initially thinks she is silly, she grows frightened of her. In
the end, however, a giant-size Alice is able to stand up to the Queen's temper and her
threats.
King of Hearts: Somewhat overshadowed by his loudmouthed wife, the King of Hearts
is a remarkably dense figure. He makes terrible jokes, and cannot seem to say anything
clever. Alice outreasons him quite nicely at the trial.
Gryphon: The Gryphon, mythical animal that is half eagle and half lion, takes Alice to
sea the Mock Turtle. He attended undersea school with the Mock Turtle.
The Mock Turtle: The Mock Turtle is always crying, and he and the Gryphon tells
stories loaded with puns. His name is another play on words (mock turtle soup is a soup
that actually uses lamb as its meat ingredient).
The Knave of Hearts: The unfortunate Knave is the man on trial, accused of stealing the
tarts of the Queen of Hearts. The evidence produced against him is unjust.
Alice's sister: She helps to anchor the story, appearing at the beginning, before Alice
begins her adventures, and at the end, after Alice wakes up from her strange dream. Her
presence lets us know that Alice is once again in the real world, in the comfort of home
and family.

Major Themes
Growth into Adulthood: This theme is central to both books. Alice's adventures parallel
the journey from childhood to adulthood. She comes into numerous new situations in

which adaptability is absolutely necessary for success. She shows marked progress
throughout the course of the book; in the beginning, she can barely maintain enough
composure to keep herself from crying. By the end of the novel, she is self-possessed and
able to hold her own against the most baffling Wonderland logic.
Size change: Closely connected to the above theme, size change is another recurring
concept. The dramatic changes in size hint at the radical changes the body undergoes
during adolescence. The key, once again, is adaptability. Alice's size changes also bring
about a change in perspective, and she sees the world from a very different view. In the
last trial scene, her growth into a giant reflects her interior growth. She becomes a much
stronger, self-possessed person, able to speak out against the nonsensical proceedings of
the trial.
Death: This theme is even more present in the second Alice book, Through the Looking
Glass. Alice frequently makes references to her own death without knowing it. Childhood
is a state of peril in Carroll's view: children are quite vulnerable, and the world presents
many dangers. Another aspect of death is its inevitability. Since the Alice books are at
root about change (the transition from childhood to adulthood, the passage of time),
mortality is inescapable as a theme. Death is the final step of this process of growth.
While death is only hinted at in the first book, the second book is saturated with
references to mortality and macabre humor.
Games/ Learning the Rules: Every new encounter is something of a game for Alice;
there are rules to learn, and consequences for learning or not learning those rules. Games
are a constant part of life in Wonderland, from the Caucus race to the strange croquet
match to the fact that the royal court is a living deck of cards. And every new social
encounter is like a game, in that there are bizarre, apparently arbitrary rules that Alice has
to master. Learning the rules is a metaphor for the adaptations to new social situations
that every child makes as she grows older. Mastering each challenge, Alice grows wiser
and more adaptable as time goes on.
Language and Logic/Illogic:
Carroll delights in puns. The Alice books are chockfull of games with language, to the
reader's delight and Alice's confusion. The games often point out some inconsistency or
slipperiness of language in general and English in particular. The books point out the
pains and advantages of language. Language is a source of joy and adaptability; it can
also be a source of great confusion.
Just as baffling is the bizarre logic at work in Wonderland. Every creature can justify the
most absurd behavior, and their arguments for themselves are often fairly complex. Their
strange reasoning is another source of delight for the reader and challenge for Alice. She
has to learn to discern between unusual logic and utter nonsense.

Plot Overview
Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day, drowsily reading over her sisters
shoulder, when she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat running by her. The
White Rabbit pulls out a pocket watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a rabbit
hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole and comes upon a great hallway lined
with doors. She finds a small door that she opens using a key she discovers on a nearby
table. Through the door, she sees a beautiful garden, and Alice begins to cry when she
realizes she cannot fit through the door. She finds a bottle marked DRINK ME and
downs the contents. She shrinks down to the right size to enter the door but cannot enter
since she has left the key on the tabletop above her head. Alice discovers a cake marked
EAT ME which causes her to grow to an inordinately large height. Still unable to enter
the garden, Alice begins to cry again, and her giant tears form a pool at her feet. As she
cries, Alice shrinks and falls into the pool of tears. The pool of tears becomes a sea, and
as she treads water she meets a Mouse. The Mouse accompanies Alice to shore, where a
number of animals stand gathered on a bank. After a Caucus Race, Alice scares the
animals away with tales of her cat, Dinah, and finds herself alone again.
Alice meets the White Rabbit again, who mistakes her for a servant and sends her off to
fetch his things. While in the White Rabbits house, Alice drinks an unmarked bottle of
liquid and grows to the size of the room. The White Rabbit returns to his house, fuming at
the now-giant Alice, but she swats him and his servants away with her giant hand. The
animals outside try to get her out of the house by throwing rocks at her, which
inexplicably transform into cakes when they land in the house. Alice eats one of the
cakes, which causes her to shrink to a small size. She wanders off into the forest, where
she meets a Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah (i.e., a water pipe).
The Caterpillar and Alice get into an argument, but before the Caterpillar crawls away in
disgust, he tells Alice that different parts of the mushroom will make her grow or shrink.
Alice tastes a part of the mushroom, and her neck stretches above the trees. A pigeon sees
her and attacks, deeming her a serpent hungry for pigeon eggs.
Alice eats another part of the mushroom and shrinks down to a normal height. She
wanders until she comes across the house of the Duchess. She enters and finds the
Duchess, who is nursing a squealing baby, as well as a grinning Cheshire Cat, and a Cook
who tosses massive amounts of pepper into a cauldron of soup. The Duchess behaves
rudely to Alice and then departs to prepare for a croquet game with the Queen. As she
leaves, the Duchess hands Alice the baby, which Alice discovers is a pig. Alice lets the
pig go and reenters the forest, where she meets the Cheshire Cat again. The Cheshire Cat
explains to Alice that everyone in Wonderland is mad, including Alice herself. The
Cheshire Cat gives directions to the March Hares house and fades away to nothing but a
floating grin.
Alice travels to the March Hares house to find the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the
Dormouse having tea together. Treated rudely by all three, Alice stands by the tea party,
uninvited. She learns that they have wronged Time and are trapped in perpetual tea-time.
After a final discourtesy, Alice leaves and journeys through the forest. She finds a tree
with a door in its side, and travels through it to find herself back in the great hall. She
takes the key and uses the mushroom to shrink down and enter the garden.
After saving several gardeners from the temper of the Queen of Hearts, Alice joins the
Queen in a strange game of croquet. The croquet ground is hilly, the mallets and balls are

live flamingos and hedgehogs, and the Queen tears about, frantically calling for the other
players executions. Amidst this madness, Alice bumps into the Cheshire Cat again, who
asks her how she is doing. The King of Hearts interrupts their conversation and attempts
to bully the Cheshire Cat, who impudently dismisses the King. The King takes offense
and arranges for the Cheshire Cats execution, but since the Cheshire Cat is now only a
head floating in midair, no one can agree on how to behead it.
The Duchess approaches Alice and attempts to befriend her, but the Duchess makes Alice
feel uneasy. The Queen of Hearts chases the Duchess off and tells Alice that she must
visit the Mock Turtle to hear his story. The Queen of Hearts sends Alice with the Gryphon
as her escort to meet the Mock Turtle. Alice shares her strange experiences with the Mock
Turtle and the Gryphon, who listen sympathetically and comment on the strangeness of
her adventures. After listening to the Mock Turtles story, they hear an announcement that
a trial is about to begin, and the Gryphon brings Alice back to the croquet ground.
The Knave of Hearts stands trial for stealing the Queens tarts. The King of Hearts leads
the proceedings, and various witnesses approach the stand to give evidence. The Mad
Hatter and the Cook both give their testimony, but none of it makes any sense. The White
Rabbit, acting as a herald, calls Alice to the witness stand. The King goes nowhere with
his line of questioning, but takes encouragement when the White Rabbit provides new
evidence in the form of a letter written by the Knave. The letter turns out to be a poem,
which the King interprets as an admission of guilt on the part of the Knave. Alice
believes the note to be nonsense and protests the Kings interpretation. The Queen
becomes furious with Alice and orders her beheading, but Alice grows to a huge size and
knocks over the Queens army of playing cards.
All of a sudden, Alice finds herself awake on her sisters lap, back at the riverbank. She
tells her sister about her dream and goes inside for tea as her sister ponders Alices
adventures.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes through a variety
of absurd physical changes. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts as
a symbol for the changes that occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be
traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration, and sadness when she goes through them.
She struggles to maintain a comfortable physical size. In Chapter I, she becomes upset
when she keeps finding herself too big or too small to enter the garden. In Chapter V, she
loses control over specific body parts when her neck grows to an absurd length. These
constant fluctuations represent the way a child may feel as her body grows and changes
during puberty.
Life as a Meaningless Puzzle
In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to
have no clear solutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations. Alice
expects that the situations she encounters will make a certain kind of sense, but they
repeatedly frustrate her ability to figure out Wonderland. Alice tries to understand the

Caucus race, solve the Mad Hatters riddle, and understand the Queens ridiculous
croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles and challenges presented to
Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in Alices
Adventures in Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic.
Alice learns that she cannot expect to find logic or meaning in the situations that she
encounters, even when they appear to be problems, riddles, or games that would normally
have solutions that Alice would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader point about
the ways that life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even when problems
seem familiar or solvable.
Death as a Constant and Underlying Menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in which she risks death, and while these
threats never materialize, they suggest that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of
Alices Adventures in Wonderland as a present and possible outcome. Death appears in
Chapter I, when the narrator mentions that Alice would say nothing of falling off of her
own house, since it would likely kill her. Alice takes risks that could possibly kill her, but
she never considers death as a possible outcome. Over time, she starts to realize that her
experiences in Wonderland are far more threatening than they appear to be. As the Queen
screams Off with its head! she understands that Wonderland may not merely be a
ridiculous realm where expectations are repeatedly frustrated. Death may be a real threat,
and Alice starts to understand that the risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd
after all.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the texts major themes.
Dream
Alices Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alices dream, so that the characters and
phenomena of the real world mix with elements of Alices unconscious state. The dream
motif explains the abundance of nonsensical and disparate events in the story. As in a
dream, the narrative follows the dreamer as she encounters various episodes in which she
attempts to interpret her experiences in relationship to herself and her world. Though
Alices experiences lend themselves to meaningful observations, they resist a singular
and coherent interpretation.
Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that the only reliable aspect of Wonderland that
she can count on is that it will frustrate her expectations and challenge her understanding
of the natural order of the world. In Wonderland, Alice finds that her lessons no longer
mean what she thought, as she botches her multiplication tables and incorrectly recites
poems she had memorized while in Wonderland. Even Alices physical dimensions
become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically throughout the story. Wonderland
frustrates Alices desires to fit her experiences in a logical framework where she can
make sense of the relationship between cause and effect.
Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, making
use of puns and playing on multiple meanings of words throughout the text. Carroll
invents words and expressions and develops new meanings for words. Alices

exclamation Curious and curiouser! suggests that both her surroundings and the
language she uses to describe them expand beyond expectation and convention. Anything
is possible in Wonderland, and Carrolls manipulation of language reflects this sense of
unlimited possibility.
Curious, Nonsense, and Confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to describe phenomena she has trouble
explaining. Though the words are generally interchangeable, she usually assigns curious
and confusing to experiences or encounters that she tolerates. She endures is the
experiences that are curious or confusing, hoping to gain a clearer picture of how that
individual or experience functions in the world. When Alice declares something to be
nonsense, as she does with the trial in Chapter XII, she rejects or criticizes the experience
or encounter.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas
or concepts.
The Garden
Nearly every object in Alices Adventures in Wonderland functions as a symbol, but
nothing clearly represents one particular thing. The symbolic resonances of Wonderland
objects are generally contained to the individual episode in which they appear. Often the
symbols work together to convey a particular meaning. The garden may symbolize the
Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and innocence that Alice is not permitted to
access. On a more abstract level, the garden may simply represent the experience of
desire, in that Alice focuses her energy and emotion on trying to attain it. The two
symbolic meanings work together to underscore Alices desire to hold onto her feelings
of childlike innocence that she must relinquish as she matures.
The Caterpillars Mushroom
Like the garden, the Caterpillars mushroom also has multiple symbolic meanings. Some
readers and critics view the Caterpillar as a sexual threat, its phallic shape a symbol of
sexual virility. The Caterpillars mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice
must master the properties of the mushroom to gain control over her fluctuating size,
which represents the bodily frustrations that accompany puberty. Others view the
mushroom as a psychedelic hallucinogen that compounds Alices surreal and distorted
perception of Wonderland.

Analysis of Major Characters

Alice
Alice is a sensible prepubescent girl from a wealthy English family who finds herself in a
strange world ruled by imagination and fantasy. Alice feels comfortable with her identity
and has a strong sense that her environment is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent
rules and features. Alices familiarity with the world has led one critic to describe her as a
disembodied intellect. Alice displays great curiosity and attempts to fit her diverse
experiences into a clear understanding of the world.

Alice approaches Wonderland as an anthropologist, but maintains a strong sense of

noblesse oblige that comes with her class status. She has confidence in her social
position, education, and the Victorian virtue of good manners. Alice has a feeling of
entitlement, particularly when comparing herself to Mabel, whom she declares has a
poky little house, and no toys. Additionally, she flaunts her limited information base
with anyone who will listen and becomes increasingly obsessed with the importance of
good manners as she deals with the rude creatures of Wonderland. Alice maintains a
superior attitude and behaves with solicitous indulgence toward those she believes are
less privileged.
The tension of Alices Adventures in Wonderland emerges when Alices fixed perspective
of the world comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. Alices
fixed sense of order clashes with the madness she finds in Wonderland. The White Rabbit
challenges her perceptions of class when he mistakes her for a servant, while the Mad
Hatter, March Hare, and Pigeon challenge Alices notions of urbane intelligence with an
unfamiliar logic that only makes sense within the context of Wonderland. Most
significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good manners by constantly
assaulting her with dismissive rudeness. Alices fundamental beliefs face challenges at
every turn, and as a result Alice suffers an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as
she perceives her sense of order collapsing all around her. Alice must choose between
retaining her notions of order and assimilating into Wonderlands nonsensical rules.
The Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is unique among Wonderland creatures. Threatened by no one, it
maintains a cool, grinning outsider status. The Cheshire Cat has insight into the workings
of Wonderland as a whole. Its calm explanation to Alice that to be in Wonderland is to be
mad reveals a number of points that do not occur to Alice on her own. First, the
Cheshire Cat points out that Wonderland as a place has a stronger cumulative effect than
any of its citizens. Wonderland is ruled by nonsense, and as a result, Alices normal
behavior becomes inconsistent with its operating principles, so Alice herself becomes
mad in the context of Wonderland. Certainly, Alices burning curiosity to absorb
everything she sees in Wonderland sets her apart from the other Wonderland creatures,
making her seem mad in comparison.
The Queen of Hearts
As the ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is the character that Alice must
inevitably face to figure out the puzzle of Wonderland. In a sense, the Queen of Hearts is
literally the heart of Alices conflict. Unlike many of the other characters in Wonderland,
the Queen of Hearts is not as concerned with nonsense and perversions of logic as she is
with absolute rule and execution. In Wonderland, she is a singular force of fear who even
dominates the King of Hearts. In the Queens presence, Alice finally gets a taste of true
fear, even though she understands that the Queen of Hearts is merely a playing card. The
Gryphon later informs Alice that the Queen never actually executes anyone she sentences
to death, which reinforces the fact that the Queen of Heartss power lies in her rhetoric.
The Queen becomes representative of the idea that Wonderland is devoid of substance.

Key Facts

Alices Adventures in Wonderland

full title Alices Adventures in Wonderland
author Lewis Carroll
type of work Novella
genre Fairy tale; childrens fiction; satire; allegory
language English
time and place written 18621863, Oxford
date of first publication 1865
publisher Macmillan & Co.
narrator The narrator is anonymous and does not use many words to describe events in
the story.
point of view The narrator speaks in third person, though occasionally in first and
second person. The narrative follows Alice around on her travels, voicing her thoughts
and feelings.
tone Straightforward; avuncular
tense Past
setting (time) Victorian era, circa publication date
setting (place) England, Wonderland
protagonist Alice
major conflict Alice attempts to come to terms with the puzzle of Wonderland as she
undergoes great individual changes while entrenched in Wonderland.
rising action Alice follows the White Rabbit down a well and pursues him through
Wonderland.
climax Alice gains control over her size and enters the garden, where she participates in
the trial of the Knave of Hearts.
falling action Alice realizes that Wonderland is a sham and knocks over the playing
card court, causing her to wake up and dispel the dream of Wonderland.
themes The tragic and inevitable loss of childhood innocence; Life as a meaningless
puzzle; Death as a constant and underlying menace
motifs Dream; subversion; language; curious, nonsense, and confusing
symbols The garden; the mushroom
foreshadowing The Mouses history about Fury and the Mouse foreshadows the trial at
the end of the story.
Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1-3
The book begins with a poem about a golden afternoon spent rowing on a river; the
speaker of the poem is pressed by three girls (Prima, Secunda, and Tertia) to tell them a
fantastic story. Each time he tries to take a break and leave the rest for "next time," the
girls insist that it is already "next time"; in this way, the speaker tells us, the story of
Alice's adventures in Wonderland took shape.
Young Alice is sitting by the river bank with her older sister, feeling bored; her sister's
book has no pictures or conversation, and thus holds no interest for Alice. Suddenly, a

white rabbit scampers back, proclaims that it is very late, and pulls a pocket watch out of
its waistcoat. Though she initially does not notice the strangeness of a talking rabbit,
when she sees the rabbit's clothes and watch, she becomes very interested. She follows
the rabbit, hopping right down a deep rabbit hole after him, giving no thought of how she
plans to get out again.
She seems to fall quite slowly, having time to observe the things around her. There are
shelves and maps and pictures hung on pegs; at one point, she picks up a jar of orange
marmalade and puts it back into place on another shelf. She seems to fall for an
interminable amount of time, and begins to worry that she might fall straight through to
the other side of the earth. Although she has no one to talk to, she practices some of the
facts she learned in school: she knows the distance from one end of the earth to the other,
and she says some of the grand words she has heard in her lessons. She worries about
missing her cat, Dinah, at dinner. Finally, she reaches the bottom of the hole. She is in a
long hallway, and she is just in time to see the white rabbit hurrying away.
The hallway is lined with doors, but all of them are locked. On a three-legged table made
of glass, Alice finds a key, but it is far too small for any of the locks. Then, Alice finds a
tiny door hidden behind a curtain. The key works, but the door is far too small. Through
the door there is a miniature passageway, leading to a lovely garden; the sight of the
garden makes Alice more determined than ever to find a way to get through. Alice goes
back to the table, where a little bottle has appeared. The label says "DRINK ME," and
after checking to see if it marked "poison," Alice drinks it all. She shrinks to a size small
enough for the door, but she soon realizes that she has left the key on top of the glass
table. She is now to short to reach it; seeing her dilemma and fooling foolish for her
mistake, she begins to cry. But she then finds a piece of cake, on which is a little slip of
paper that says "EAT ME." Alice eats, and waits for the results.
Analysis
The poem at the beginning of the book is a reasonably accurate account of how the book
came to be. The three girls in the boat are the Lidell sisters, of whom Alice is the second
oldest. Carroll often entertained the girls with fantastic stories he made up on the spot. On
Alice Lidell's insistence, he took one of his longer tales and wrote it down.
The central theme of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is Alice's struggle to adapt to the
rules of this new world; metaphorically, it is Alice's struggle to adapt to the strange rules
and behaviors of adults. The rabbit, with his watch and his concern for schedules and
appointments, is a representative of this adult world. Alice's story starts when she follows
him down the hole.
She is characterized as a bright child who often says or does foolish things; in other
words, Alice has much in common with any child who is trying to behave like someone
older than she is. Her blunders come about because of unfamiliarity rather than stupidity.
She is also an unusually conscientious child; note the moment when she is falling down

the hall, and she puts the marmalade carefully back on the shelf for fear that the jar might
kill someone if she were to drop it.
As Carroll sees it, the world of children is a dangerous one. Not knowing the rules,
however foolish or arbitrary those rules may be, is a source of great peril. Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland is shadowed by hints of death, and death is a recurring theme
of both of Carroll's books. Through the Looking Glass, the second book about Alice's
adventures, is an even darker story; in Through the Looking Glass, reminders of death are
inescapable. But even here, at the start of Alice's adventure, we are reminded of the frailty
of humans and of children in particular. The first hint of mortality comes with Alice's
concern about the marmalade jar; her worry shows that Wonderland is not an escape from
all of the limitations of the real world. Death is still a possibility. A moment later, Carroll
treats us to a very macabre joke. When Alice is falling, she takes pride in her composure:
"Well!' thought Alice to herself, after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of
tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say
anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!'" (13). The narrator adds, grimly,
"Which was very likely true." The narrator agrees with Alice, but not for the reason she
might think: after falling off a house, the reason why she would not say anything is
because she would be dead. Alice makes another unknowing allusion to her own death
when she peers into the tiny door. She realizes that she cannot even fit her head through
the opening, and even if she could, her head "would be of very little use without my
shoulders" (16). She is referring, unknowingly, to her own decapitation. The moment is
both an allusion to death and a bit of foreshadowing. At the end of the book, the Queen of
Hearts will try her best to separate Alice's head from her shoulders.
In Alice's treatment of the little drink, we are reminded of the specific perils that face
children. Carroll writes: ". . . [F]or she had read several nice little histories about children
who had got burnt, and eaten up be wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because
they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them" (17-8). The
challenge of mastering the "simple rules" is going to be Alice's main struggle in
Wonderland, and this passage hints at some of worst consequences of not knowing the
rules. Innocence is closely connected to ignorance: in this book, it is not an idealized or
safe state. While we are charmed by Alice's blunders and know that she will make it
home in the end, Carroll is constantly reminding us of the consequences of not knowing
the rules. Childhood is partially a state of peril, and Carroll names a few of those perils
directly: poison bottles that the child cannot read, falls, burns, wounds from blades that
the child is too young to handle (18). Not least of these dangers is an adult world that
baffles and confuses. Alice is trained enough to read the bottle before she drinks it. She
knows the simple rule in this case, and knows well enough to avoid the label "poison."
Her challenge will be to learn more complex rules, reading not only labels but also
situations and people as she makes her way through Wonderland.
Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears
Summary:

As the cake takes effect, Alice finds herself growing larger. This time, she keeps growing
until she is the size of a giant. Now, getting through the door to the garden will be more
difficult than ever, and Alice begins to cry again. The white rabbit comes scurrying down
the hall; at the sight of him, Alice dries her tears and tries to talk to him, but one look at
Alice and the rabbit runs away in terror. He leaves behind his fan and his white kid
gloves. Alice begins to wonder how so many strange things could happen to her.
Yesterday was a day like any other, and Alice begins to consider the possibility that she
might have changed during the night. If she has changed, there's no telling who she might
be. She wonders if she's been changed into Mabel, a girl who is less affluent and less
bright than Alice: when she tries to recite her lessons and fails, she fears that she must be
Mabel.
Suddenly, Alice realizes that she has put on the rabbit's gloves: if they fit, she must be
shrinking again. She soon learns that the cause is the fan that she is holding, which she
drops hastily before she shrinks away completely. She is now the right size for the door to
the garden, but she has left the key, once again, on the glass table. She soon slips and falls
into a vast body of salt water. It is the pool of tears that she cried when she was a giant.
She sees a mouse swimming through the little sea, and tries to talk to him, but she
unintentionally offends and frightens the creature by talking about her cat. The mouse can
talk. Alice offends him again by bringing up a dog that kills rats, and the mouse seems to
be swimming away, but when Alice calls out to him and apologizes, the mouse swims
back and tells her to swim to shore with him. He promises to tell her his story, after which
she will understand why he hates and fears cats. They swim towards the shore, and Alice
finds herself swimming at the head of a curious party of animals who have fallen in the
water: a Duck, a Dodo, a Lory, an Eaglet, and a few other animals.
Analysis:
Alice's shifts in size and inquiries into her own identity reflect the difficulties of growing
up. Just as children on the verge of adulthood sometimes find themselves too small for
adult privileges while being forced to talk on the no-fun world of adult responsibilities,
Alice finds her body thrown back and forth between two extremes of size. The abrupt,
almost violent physical changes might also suggest the sudden physical changes that
come with the onset of adolescence.
Her inquiries into her own identity parallel a child's search for herself as she grows older.
Alice worries that her identity has been displaced; her fears parallel any child's
uncertainty about her place in the world. Note that Alice loathes the idea of being Mabel
not only because Mabel is less bright, but because Mabel is less affluent. Alice is aware
of differences in wealth, but she is still a young child; she sees class only in terms of how
many material objects a little girl is allowed to have.
Chapter 3: A Caucus Race and a Long Tale
Summary:

The animals and Alice make it to the shore, wet and grouchy. The mouse tries to dry them
off by telling a dry story: he recites English history in flat, uninspired prose. At some
point, he uses the word "it" without an antecedent, which causes confusion as the animals
argue about what "it" is. The Dodo suggests another method of getting dry, as everyone
seems to be as wet as over. The animals are initially reluctant to follow the Dodo's advice,
as his speech is full of grand words that the other animals don't understand: the Eaglet
convinces the Dodo of not understanding them either.
The Dodo suggests a Caucus Race. Alice and the animals line up and race around in
circles, starting and stopping whenever they please. After a half-hour or so, they are all
quite dry. The Dodo declares that they are all winners. Alice is charged with the
responsibility of giving prizes to all of them: all she has is a container of little candies.
She gives them one candy each. For her prize, the Dodo awards her the thimble that was
in Alice's pocket. She thinks it's all totally absurd, but she dares not laugh for fear of
offending them.
She asks the mouse to tell his tale, and he begins. But Alice is transfixed by the mouse's
tale, and she looks at it as he speaks. Her impression of the tale is merged with her
impression of his tale, and on the page the mouse's story, in verse, is written in the shape
of a mouse's tail. The mouse accuses her of being inattentive, and wanders off in a huff.
Alice is quite upset, and admits that she wishes that Dinah were with her. Dinah could
fetch the mouse back so that he might finish his story. The birds ask who Dinah is, and
Alice, eager as always to talk about her cat, talks about Dinah's many talents and virtues
as a pet. She mentions that Dinah is quite good at catching birds, and at this bit of news
the birds all begin to leave. Alice feels quite lonely, and begins to cry again. Soon, she
hears the sound of little footsteps coming towards her.
Analysis:
Puns abound. The two meanings of "dry" are played on at the start of the chapter, as the
mouse recites from Havilland Chapmell's Short Course of History. Carroll's taste for puns
and the playful side of language is a constant source of amusement throughout the book.
The mouse quotes a passage where the antecedent for the word "it" is missing (though the
meaning is still quite clear), and the result is general confusion among the animals; this is
one of many moments where the creatures of Wonderland create confusion by taking
language at absolute face-value. They allow themselves to be confused by pronouns
without antecedents; they also take figurative language literally, or confuse homonyms.
Much of one's ability to understand language comes from the ability to ignore its
inconsistencies and incoherencies: for example, the listener can understand the meaning
of "it" without hearing its antecedent. The creatures of Wonderland are not merely silly:
they always have their own logic, a certain sense and reasoning behind their absurd
behavior. Their strange reactions to language point out the potential pitfalls of English,
and their bizarre rules and sensitivities parallel the arbitrary nature of any culture's
customs and habits. Alice's adventures are wonderful training for adapting to the absurd
behavior of adults.

The Caucus Race parodies political process: the participants run around in confused
circles, never accomplishing anything. If we can take Alice as a symbol for the average
citizen, we see that the Race does very little to benefit her. At the end, Alice is forced to
give everyone a prize. Although Alice also receives a prize, she is given something that
she already had. More humor comes from the contrast between the animals' sober faces
and Alice's secret conviction that the whole process is absurd.
Carroll puns with the homonyms "tale" and "tale," as the shape of the mouse's tail
becomes the shape of the mouse's printed story. The pun is playful, and Alice's
fascination with the animal's tale makes for a charming moment: the charm of her
wandering attention, the shape of the printed words, and the rhyme scheme mask some of
the darkness of the mouse's story. He is talking about being cornered by a dog and forced
to go on trial. The dog (whose name is Fury) wanted to be prosecutor, judge, and jury; he
also wanted to condemn the mouse to death. We never hear the end of the story, as the
Mouse, realizing that Alice is paying less than total attention to the meaning of his words,
runs off in a huff.
Alice makes more unknowing allusions to death, this time to the death of others. She
wishes her cat Dinah was there, so that the cat might fetch the mouse back to finish his
story. She seems unaware of the fact that this would mean the mouse's death. And she
unthinkingly talks about Dinah's amazing talent for catching birds, not realizing that this
kind of talk will offend all of her new avian friends.
Summary and Analysis of Chapters 4-6
The White Rabbit comes, fretting about his missing things and the wrath of the Dutchess.
Alice looks around for the White Rabbit's gloves and fan, but everything has changed:
she sees that hall with its many doors have disappeared completely. The White Rabbit
sees Alice and mistakes him for his maid. When he orders her back to his home to fetch
his gloves and fan, she hurries off without correcting him. In the White Rabbit's house,
she finds a fan and gloves and a tiny bottle, similar to the one she drank from before.
There is no sign instructing her to drink, but she begins to drink anyway. Suddenly, she
has grown so large that she can barely fit in the house. There is no apparent way out. She
hears the rabbit outside the house, calling for Mary Ann. The door is blocked, so the
rabbit resolves to go in through the window. Alice, nervous about being caught in her
present state reaches out the window with her hand and makes a grab at the air. She hears
a shattering of glass; the rabbit must have fallen through a cucumber-frame. The rabbit
calls for one of his servants, Pat, and demands that the arm be removed. Alice makes
another grab at the air, and this time she hears both animals crash down into a cucumberframe.
The animals decide to send Bill, another servant, down the chimney. Alice manages to
wedge her foot into the chimney, and when she hears Bill scuttling down, she gives a
good solid kick. Bill goes flying. The animals and Alice are at a standoff. When she hears
them planning to set the house on fire, she calls out that they'd better not. Before long, the
launch a barrowful of little pebbles in through the window, some of which hit Alice in the

face. But after they land, the pebbles turn into little cakes. Alice eats one of them, and it
shrinks her down to the size of the little animals; she runs as fast as she can out of the
house and beyond. As she runs away, she sees Bill (who is a lizard) being supported by
two guinea pigs.
She finds herself in a dense forest, and she decides to search for something to restore her
to her normal size, after which she will go and find that lovely garden she saw through
the little door (Chapters 1-2). Suddenly, Alice finds herself face-to-face with a puppy. She
starts to play fetch with it, but she soon realizes that at her present size, the puppy poses a
considerable threat. Alice barely manages to escape being trampled.
Wandering through fields of giant flowers and blades of grass, Alice searches for
something to eat or drink that will restore her to her full size. She comes upon a
mushroom, on which is sitting a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah.
Analysis
More growing. The story plays again with the definition of "growing up." Alice talks to
herself when she is stuck in the house, and resolves to write a book about her strange
adventures when she is grown up, but then realizes mournfully that she is "grown up"
already, in terms of size. In Chapter 2, she made a similar statement when she berated
herself, "a great girl," for crying so much. But Alice's size is juxtaposed to her nave
comments and worries; these moments emphasize that growing up is more than a matter
of size.
In fact, many of Alice's victories come when she is small, and being large is often a great
hindrance. Against the puppy, Alice has nothing but her wits to help her against the
animal. She manages to escape. And note that in the house she is impeded by her giant
size, and is only able to escape when she shrinks down again. Size doesn't matter as much
as adaptability, and Alice's true "growing up" comes with her adaptation to each new
challenge.
A recurring theme is Alice's desire to see the garden. Wonderland is in this way similar to
dreams with an unfulfilled desire. But the garden itself merely structures Alice's journey:
after each new adventure, she presses on toward the garden, but it is the incidents along
the way that are making her into a wiser person.
Chapter 5: Advice From a Caterpillar
Summary:
The Caterpillar asks Alice who she is, and she can give no satisfactory reply; she has
changed so many times in one day that she feels she can no longer answer the question
with certainty. The Caterpillar tells her it is not so confusing to change. They have a
conversation in which the very mellow Caterpillar gives important advice to the irritable
Alice: she must keep her temper. He asks her to recite "You are old, Father William,"

which Alice does, although afterward they agree that she recited incorrectly. He also tells
her that she will grow accustomed to the sensitivity of the animals. Alice expresses a wish
to be larger. The Caterpillar contradicts Alice repeatedly, with absolute composure. After
a while he crawls off through the grass, telling her that one side of the mushroom will
make her grow taller, and the other side will make her grow shorter.
Alice is not sure which side is which, so she bites into one morsel. She is suddenly
squashed down, her chin against her feet; she hastily eats the other morsel, and her body
elongates tremendously. Her neck becomes so long that she cannot see her shoulders, and
she finds she can use her neck as if she were a serpent. Her head makes its way through
the lives of a tree, and she happens on a Pigeon, who mistakes Alice for a serpent. The
Pigeon fears for her eggs. Alice tries to assure the Pigeon that she is not a serpent, but
Alice must answer truthfully when the Pigeon asks if she has eaten eggs. The Pigeon
argues that even if Alice is a little girl, if little girls eat eggs then they must be a kind of
serpent. Alice is silenced by the novel idea. After some more arguing, the Pigeon shoos
Alice off.
Alice eats from each of the mushroom bits, using them to balance each other, until she
brings herself to her normal size. She feels strange to be her correct size again, but she is
pleased that one part of her plan is now complete. She resolves to go find the garden, but
she comes across a charming miniature house. Alice wants to go inside, and she
considerately opts not to frighten them with her normal size; she eats mushroom until she
is nine inches high.
Analysis:
The conversation between Alice and the Caterpillar is worth a close look, and makes for
an excellent paper topic. The discussion brings into focus the themes of change and
growing up; for the Caterpillar, for whom dramatic transformation is a natural part of life,
change is neither upsetting nor surprising. He is unshakably calm, with the exception of
when Alice complains of being only three inches tall (the Caterpillar is exactly three
inches tall). He also seems to be less belligerent than many of the creatures of
Wonderland, even though he contradicts almost everything Alice says. He is a sagefigure, whose mysterious silences and terse responses provide a sharp contrast to Alice's
exasperation and confused replies. The game in Wonderland is change and
transformation, and the Caterpillar understands the game that Alice is trying to learn how
to play.
The poem Alice recites, "You Are Old, Father William," is a parody of "The Old Man's
Comforts and How He Gained Them," by Robert Southey. The poem is in line with the
theme of change and growth: a young man asks his father how he has maintained so
many astounding abilities despite his old age.
The Pigeon's classification of little girls as a type of serpent is one of many humorous
logical exercises by the creatures of Wonderland. Remember that Carroll was a
mathematician with a love of logic puzzles. The creatures of Wonderland always have a

reason and a method to their nonsense. They are constantly reasoning their way to absurd
conclusions, to the reader's delight and to Alice's confusion.
Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper
Summary:
As Alice looks at the house and tries to decide what to do next, a fish dressed as a
footman arrives and knocks on the door. A frog dressed as a footman answers, and the
Fish-Footman delivers an invitation from the Queen to the Duchess to play croquet.
When the two footmen bow, their curls become entangled, and Alice laughs so hard she
has to leave; when she returns the Fish is gone and the Frog-Footman is sitting on the
ground. When Alice goes to knock on the door the Frog-Footman tells her that it's no use.
Alice tries to talk with him, but she finds him quite contrary, and so she goes into the
house herself. She's now in the kitchen, where the Duchess is sitting in the middle of the
room, nursing a baby, and the cook is busying herself over a large cauldron of soup.
There is also a cat, sitting on the hearth, grinning widely. The air is full of pepper, and the
baby is crying.
Alice asks why the cat is grinning, and the Duchess responds that he grins because he is a
Cheshire cat. Alice tries to talk to the Duchess, but the Duchess is quite rude. The cook
begins to throw everything within reach at the Duchess and the baby, and the Duchess
takes no notice, even when the objects hit her. Alice is terrified for the child, but the
Duchess tells her to mind her business. Alice answers her smartly. The Duchess begins to
throw the baby into the air, singing a song about beating children, before she finally
tosses the baby to Alice and tells her to nurse the child herself if she likes. The Duchess
heads off to get ready for her croquet match. Alice, concerned for the child's welfare,
takes it with her when she leaves the house, but before long the baby has turned into a
pig. She puts it down and it trots away into the woods.
Alice soon runs into the Cheshire cat, whom she asks for directions. He points the way to
the Hatter's home, and to the March Hare's place, but he warns her that they're both mad.
He also says that everyone around these parts is quite mad, including himself and Alice;
if she weren't mad, she wouldn't have come. They talk, the Cheshire cat disappearing and
reappearing the whole while. He finally disappears a final time, tail first and grin last.
Alice decides to go the March Hare's place, but she feels a sense of foreboding when she
reaches his home. It is covered with fear and has two great ears. She uses the mushroom
to rise her height to two feet, but she still feels quite anxious as she enters.
Analysis:
Alice shows a considerable amount of composure in this chapter. She never breaks down
crying, and she somehow manages to keep her temper despite the argumentative creatures
she meets. The theme of growing up works its way through this chapter. We meet the
Duchess, who almost at first glance tells Alice that she knows very little (71); Alice is
quite displeased by the insult, but she holds her own. A moment later, she shows she is

adapting to Wonderland's logic when she answers the Duchess smartly. The Duchess says
pointedly that the world would go around faster if everyone minded his own business;
Alice responds, in Wonderland fashion, that the world going around faster would not be a
good thing. The days would become too short. She literalizes the figure of speech and
wins another little victory.
Some more of the risks of growing up are apparent in the transformation of the little
baby. One of the greatest dangers of making the transition from childhood to adulthood is
growing into a disagreeable adult. The child's transformation into a pig (the pig being a
symbol for an unpleasant person) is played on for it's full value as a metaphor. The
Cheshire cat asks also what became of the child; when Alice tells him that the baby
turned into a pig, the cat responds coyly that he thought it would. When the pig trots off
into the woods, she thinks of other children she knows who might make good pigs.
Many characters take their names from old expressions. The Cheshire cat's name comes
from the phrase, "to grin like a Cheshire cat," an expression of uncertain origin. The
March Hare is insane; an old phrase is "mad as a March hare," referring to the animal's
wild behavior during mating season. The Hatter's madness makes allusion to the real-life
tendency of hatters to go mad; hatters sometimes went insane because of the poisonous
mercury used to cure felt.
Summary and Analysis of Chapters 7-9
Alice finds the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse sitting all together at one end
of a large table. The Dormouse sits between the other two, fast asleep. They are
disagreeable from the start, and Alice's conversation with them is confusing even by
Wonderland standards. They contradict Alice at every turn, correcting her with confusing
arguments that have their own strange logic. Much of the conversation is about time. The
Hatter's watch, which only tells the day of the month, is broken. The Hatter also tells
Alice that Time (which he talks about as if it were a person) stopped working for him
about a month ago, when the Queen of Hearts accused the Hatter of murdering the time.
Since then, it's always been six o'clock, which is why they sit at tea all the time. All the
places at the table are set, because they don't have time to do the dishes. When they want
a clean plate, they just move to another spot.
The Dormouse begins to tell a strange story about three sisters who live in a well; Alice's
questions and contradictions anger the Dormouse, and the Hatter and March Hare grow
increasingly rude to her. Finally, Alice leaves, disgusted, turning around as she goes to
see the Hatter and the Hare trying to stuff the Dormouse into a pot of tea.
Alice wanders in the woods until she finds a tree with a door in it. She goes inside, and
finds herself in the long hallway again. This time, she's prepared: she takes the key from
the table and unlocks the door to the garden. She then eats just enough mushroom to step
through the door, and she finds herself in the lovely garden.
Analysis

The Mad Tea party is an important scene, as the logic/illogic of the March Hare, the
Hatter, and the Dormouse reveals some of the peculiarities of language. They are some of
the most argumentative of the creatures Alice meets in Wonderland, and their strange
remarks show Carroll's talent for word games and logic puzzles. (The readers should take
a moment to look at some of these important scenes up-close, as analyzing every pun and
bit of mad reasoning would be too time-consuming for this summary. Of particular note
are the scenes with the caterpillar, the Cheshire cat, and the Mad Tea Party.) The illogic of
language and the relationship between sense, nonsense, and words is an important theme
of the book. At one point, Alice protests that she says what she means, or at least, she
means what she says. She insists that the two are the same thing. But the creatures
correct, using examples of similar flipped sentences where the meanings are totally
different. (Example: "I like what I get" and "I get what I like.")
Alice is participating in that most adult of activities, a tea party, and she comes up against
some of the most difficult creatures she has ever met. But she generally maintains her
composure, holding her own against the three tea-takers and managing to anticipate some
of their conclusions and rules. She also is smart enough to leave when she's had enough.
The themes of growing up and learning the rules come up in Alice's triumphant entry into
the garden. Unlike the first time, when she cried and couldn't maintain control of herself,
she remains calm and uses her head to get to the garden.
Chapter 8: The Queen's Croquet Ground
Summary:
Alice enters the garden and finds three gardeners, shaped like playing cards, hurriedly
painting the white roses of a rose tree. Alice asks why they are painting the roses red, and
one of the gardeners (the Two) admits to her that the tree was supposed to be a red rose
tree. If the Queen learned about the error, she would cut off their heads.
The procession of the queen arrives. There are a good many soldiers shaped like cards,
like the gardeners; there are also the royal children, various guests, and the white rabbit.
Last come the Knave of Hearts and the King and Queen. The procession stops opposite of
Alice, and the Queen demands to know Alice's identity. Alice politely introduces herself,
but she thinks boldly that she has nothing to fear: they are only a pack of cards. Her
replies to the Queen are sassy, and she refuses to be intimidated by the Queen's bluster.
The Queen demands to know the identities of the three gardeners, who have thrown
themselves, facedown, onto the ground. She has the unfortunate gardeners turned over, so
that their numbers and suits are revealed, and when she sees the roses she orders their
beheading. The soldiers come forward, and the gardeners run to Alice for protection.
Alice secretly hides them in a large flowerpot.
The soldiers report that the gardeners are gone, and the Queen seems to forget about
them. She invites Alice to play croquet. Alice follows the Queen and talks to the White
Rabbit: from him, she learns that the Duchess is under a sentence of execution. Alice

soon learns that croquet in Wonderland is quite difficult. The balls are live hedgehogs, the
mallets are live flamingoes, and the hoops are the card-people, bent over so that their
bodies make arches. No one is waiting their turn, and the Queen is soon in a fury. Alice
begins to worry that the Queen's fury will be turned against her.
The head of the Cheshire cat appears, to Alice's relief. Finally, she has someone civil to
talk to. She complains to him about the quarrelsome players and the difficult game. When
the cat asks how she likes the Queen, Alice admits she doesn't like her much at all. When
Alice notices that the Queen is eavesdropping, she smoothly makes a save and the Queen
walks away, satisfied. The king asks whom Alice is talking to, and from the start the King
and Cheshire cat don't get along. The king demands its execution and goes to fetch the
executioner himself. Alice tries to play croquet some more, but finds it hopeless; she
returns to find the executioner, the King, and the Queen arguing, with the Cheshire cat
calmly watching. The executioner argues that since the cat is only a head, he cannot be
beheaded. The king argues that anything that has a head can be beheaded. The Queen
threatens to behead everyone if they don't find a solution. They ask Alice to mediate, and
Alice recommends that they fetch the Duchess; it's her cat, after all. By the time the
Duchess is brought forth, the cat has vanished.
Analysis:
Alice initially faces the Court of Cards with great confidence; she boldly says to herself
that they are only a pack of cards, and she has nothing to fear. She is much stronger than
when she first arrived in Wonderland. Her confidence comes through when she saves the
lives of the three gardeners.
But Alice soon realizes that although the people of the Court are only a pack of cards,
their nature does not make them any less dangerous. The Court of Cards, like people of
power in real life, rely on rank and costume for their status. Carroll turns rank and
costume into a game, mocking it; however, he does not deny that ridiculous people can be
frightening or dangerous. Alice begins by thinking she has nothing to fear, but as she
spends more time with the Queen of Hearts she becomes increasingly anxious.
The theme of games, and learning their rules, is central in this chapter. Alice is learning to
get along in a social set of powerful people; Carroll makes this adaptation into a kind of
game by turning the court into a deck of cards. Alice also has to adapt to a very difficult
game of croquet. Part of her problem is realizing that no one else is paying any attention
to the rules; sometimes, learning to play means more than learning the rules.
The argument about beheading the Cheshire cat is more fun with nonsense, as the king
argues that anything that has a head can be beheaded and the executioner argues that
being beheaded actually requires having a body. Alice is composed enough to mediate.
The Cheshire cat is one of the few animals in Wonderland who treats Alice with courtesy.
He is a figure similar to the Caterpillar, in that he seems tranquil and unbothered by the

confusion of Wonderland. He is unimpressed by the King's threats, and he easily escapes

when his safety is threatened.
Chapter 9: The Mock Turtle's Story
Summary:
The Duchess is strangely civil to Alice; she walks with her and engages her in
conversation. Alice finds it quite unpleasant, as the Duchess keeps digging her sharp chin
into Alice's shoulder. The Duchess also talks almost exclusively in clich morals; she
manages find a moral in everything Alice says or notices. They reach the Queen, who
tells the Duchess to run off or lose her head. The Duchess runs. Alice returns nervously to
the croquet game. The Queen keeps shouting "Off with her/his head," and within half an
hour, all of the other players have been taken into custody and put under sentence of
execution. Since the Card-Soldiers were acting as the arches for croquet, there are no
arches left. The Queen announces that they shall go find the Mock Turtle (the kind of
turtle one uses to make Mock Turtle Soup) so that he can tell Alice his story. As they
leave, Alice hears the King quietly pardon all of the prisoners.
Alice and the Queen come upon the Gryphon, whom the Queen wakes. She orders the
animal to take Alice to the Mock Turtle. The Queen goes back to see after her executions,
and the Gryphon assures Alice that they never really execute anybody. She comes to the
Mock Turtle, whose eyes are full of tears. He begins to tell his story. Once, he was a real
turtle. He and the Gryphon digress and talk about the strange school that they went to at
the bottom of the sea. The description is full of puns. Alice's questions irritate the
Gryphon and the Turtle, who are at times quite disagreeable.
Analysis:
The Duchess seems different, but her change in behavior actually reflects how Alice has
changed. She is no longer the intimidating figure who acted imperiously to Alice; she is
instead a rather silly woman, full of clich wisdom that degenerates into nonsense. Alice
is now able to see her clearly. The Duchess' tendency to find a moral in everything
satirizes the simplistic moralizing children's literature of Carroll's time; but now, Alice
has grown enough to view the Duchess critically.
Mock Turtle is another game with language. Mock turtle soup is actually made of veal,
which is why the original illustrations for the book show a turtle with a calf's head. The
description of the school is full of puns, with several moment of real cleverness. The
Mock Turtle says that the turtle who taught the others was called a Tortoise; Alice asks
why he was called a Tortoise if he was a Turtle. The answer is that he was called a
Tortoise because he taught the others. This joke is actually an illustration of the
disconnection between sign and signified; language, in other words, is arbitrary. Tortoise
is an arbitrary sound, and it need not mean the animal. To the Gryphon and the Mock
Turtle, teaching is part of the definition of "Tortoise." The French thinker Derrida writes

about this quality of language, and his work has had a great influence on linguistics and
literary theory.
Summary and Analysis of Chapters 10-12
The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon talk with non-stop puns. They talk to Alice about the
dances they used to have: among them was the Lobster Quadrille, a dance that sounds
somewhat like a square dance, except everyone has a lobster for a partner. They
demonstrate for Alice, without using the lobsters, and Alice attends politely but is quite
relieved when it's all over. They explain some of the parts of the song, puns raging out of
control, and then they ask Alice to tell them about her story. When she gets to the part
about not being able to recite her lessons correctly, they ask her to recite; as before, the
poems come out completely different from how they were when she memorized them.
The Mock Turtle sings a song about Turtle Soup, tears in his eyes the whole while. He is
about to repeat the chorus when they hear someone shouting that the trial is about to
begin. The Gryphon takes Alice by the hand and runs off to watch the trial. As she is
dragged off by the Gryphon, she can hear the Mock Turtle continue his song.
Analysis
The puns are two numerous to go through here; the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle are
good characters to examine if writing a paper on language and wordplay. The sea where
they grew up is a place where every possible pun is exploited.
Alice continues to show how she has grown. When she first arrived in Wonderland, she
managed to offend everyone by talking about how her cat catches and eats certain
animals; although she almost mentions that she has eaten lobster to the Gryphon and the
Mock Turtle, she catches herself just in time. She also stops herself from saying that she
has had whiting for dinner. She has learned from her previous mistakes, and so she is able
to keep things civil between her and her peculiar entertainers.
The Mock Turtle is a strange figure. He is always crying, although the Gryphon says
confidentially to Alice in Chapter 9 that the Mock Turtle's sadness is mostly in his own
head. But his tears coupled with his song make for a rather eerie moment. Perhaps his
sadness comes from the fact that Mock Turtle is meant to be consumed; in real life, it
only exists as part of the name of a soup, and in Wonderland Mock Turtles only exists to
be made into soup. Remember that the Mock Turtle tearfully told Alice that he was once
a real turtle. Though a real turtle need not be eaten, a Mock Turtle probably knows how
he will end up. The Mock Turtle's song is about beautiful turtle soup, and even as Alice
runs off to the trial she can hear his melancholy chorus. The song is yet another moment
that touches on the theme of death.
Chapter 11: Who Stole the Tarts?
Summary:

The King of Hearts is the judge, and the jurors are various animals, some of whom Alice
has already met. The White Rabbit recites the nursery rhyme about the knave of hearts
stealing tarts from the Queen of Hearts; this is the accusation against the defendant.
The first witness is the Hatter. The king threatens the Hatter all through the cross
examination, and that Hatter becomes more and more nervous. During the cross
examination, Alice feels herself starting to grow. Also, two guinea pigs, at different
points, make noise and are suppressed. The narrator explains that "suppressed" means
being stuffed into a large sack and then sat upon. Alice is quite glad to witness it, because
she had read the word many times in newspapers and never knew what it meant. The
Hatter is excused, and he takes off to go back to his tea. When he gets outside, the Queen
calls for him to be executed, but the Hatter manages to escape.
The Cook is the next witness. She is most uncooperative. The Dormouse pipes up during
the Cook's cross-examination, and the queen furiously calls for the Dormouse's
suppression, expulsion, beheading, etc.; during the scuffle involved in turning the
Dormouse out of court, the cook escapes. The king asks the queen to conduct the next
cross-examination. The White Rabbit calls the next witness: it's Alice.
Analysis:
Carroll's explanation of "suppression" is another amusing moment of wordplay. He takes
advantage of the word's broad range of meanings, as played off against the very specific
meaning the word has in the context of newspaper articles reporting trials. Alice makes
the mistake (as children often do) of using a very specific example of "suppression" as
the best definition of a word.
The proceedings of the trial are obviously unjust, and Carroll is lightly satirizing the
justice system. It is not a specific satire of justice as it existed in Victorian England; it can
more accurately be read as a satire of some of the dangers involved in trials. The judge
and the ever-present queen are tyrannical; the jurors are simpletons who barely know
their own names. Alice is appalled by the injustice of the proceedings; it is one of the
marks of her basic compassion and her growth as a person that she will refuse to be
intimidated or won over by the workings of this court. The theme of growing up is central
here. Note that without eating any mushrooms, Alice begins to grow. She also barely
notices it. Her growth here is a metaphor for gradually growing into an adult. She entered
Wonderland as a tiny version of herself, but she will leave a giant.
Chapter 12:
Summary:
Alice gets up, forgetting how large she has grown; she knocks over the jury box by
accident. She puts the box upright again, and puts all the jurors back into place. The king
begins to cross-examine her, bombarding her with bad logic; but Alice remains
completely composed, and is able to point out some of the inconsistencies in what he

says. The White Rabbit presents a completely ambiguous poem, in an unmarked letter
that purportedly was written by the Knave of Hearts. The letter is unsigned, and the
characters and objects in the poem are only referred to in pronoun form. What's more, the
situation does not seem to fit the Knave's situation. But the King and the others interpret
the letter as damning evidence against the Knave.
Alice speaks up through the presentation of this evidence. She denies that there is any
meaning in the letter, and she refuses to pipe down. When the Queen calls out for her
beheading, Alice declares that she is not afraid; after all, they are only a pack of cards.
Suddenly all the cards rise up and fly into her face . . .
And Alice wakes up, with her head in her older sister's lap. She has been dreaming. She
tells her sister about all of her strange adventures in Wonderland, and then runs into her
house to have her tea.
Her sister remains, half-dosing, dreaming herself about Alice's adventures in Wonderland.
She also dreams of Alice in years to come, a grown woman who will retain her childlike
goodness and compassion. The adult Alice will have children of her own, and perhaps she
will entertain them with the story of Wonderland.
Analysis:
We see Alice at the trial as one who cannot be intimidated, or even outreasoned. She
manages to fight her way through the king's poor reasoning, and she also stands up
against the unjust evidence. She has grown, in all senses: in size, but also in her capacity
for thinking independently. She also has a sense of justice, and she refuses to tolerate the
terrible proceedings of the unjust trial. The letter, with its poem full of pronouns, plays
again with the ambiguity of pronouns. It also satirizes the use of evidence, not only in
trials, but in all situations; as people often do in real life, the people in the trial
extrapolate the conclusions they want from evidence that is far from sufficient.
The dream ends darkly, as the cards rise up and fly into her face. Although Alice is then a
giant and perhaps has little to fear, this moment still hints at some of the difficulties of the
world. Alice makes enemies of the Card Court because she refuses to play their games as
they want her to; in a book where Alice learns game after game, this final game is one
where Alice must learn the rules but then subvert them. In refusing to be bound by the
unjust proceedings of the court, she comes into her own as a developed person with a
sense of justice and a capacity for independent thought. The final moment of the dream
suggest difficulty, but also Alice's ability to stand up for herself. When the cards fly in her
face, she screams, but Carroll tells us that the scream is half-fear and half-anger. The
attack is frightening, but Alice is prepared to fight back. The waking world continues
with this theme of growth, as Alice's sister imagines Alice in the years to come, a strong
adult who retains some of her child-like innocence and compassion.

ESSAY
Trapped in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll's Adventures in Wonderland provides a physical removal from reality by
creating a fantastical world and adventure in the mind of a young girl. In this separation,
Carroll is able to bend the rules of the temporal world. Although this is self-evident in
Alice's physical transfigurations, language and conventions provide additional means to
test if a world can defy the rules which are didactically fed to children and become
second nature to adults. Perhaps it might be an inescapable outcome given that Carroll
has been educated in a world that operates within structured set of rules, but the
"wonderful dream" seems to be peculiarly similar to the "dull reality" which Carroll
attempts to escape (98). Fantasies seem to be forever bounded by what reality allows the
mind to imagine.
The opening scene provides a possible metaphor for Carroll's artistic endeavor in the face
of these constraints:
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a
rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever
saw. How she longed to get out of the dark hall, and wander about among those beds of
bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not get her head through the
doorway (10).
Alice seems quite capable of seeing that a more beautiful world exists beyond the
confines of her environment. By making a distinction that it is her head, the physical
location of the mind, which prevents her from proceeding, Carroll suggests that the mind
provides the barrier to entering the Eden-like grounds of pure beauty. Alice's subsequent
struggle to physically transform herself to squeeze within these boundaries mirrors
Carroll's endeavor to gain entry into the unbounded imagination. Adult consciousness
becomes comparable to the "rat-hole" in which Alice finds herself trapped. By grounding
the narrative in the eyes and imagination of Alice, who is just beginning to be inculcated
with lessons and physically removing her from the temporal world, Carroll adjusts the
conditions of his adult world to explore if childhood presents the only opportunity or the
"key" to the access the imagination. Yet even as he changes the parameters of the world
and the eyes of the beholder, his endeavor appears doomed to failure; when Alice finally
locates the garden, she finds that her conception of perfection is tainted. As the gardeners
paint the red rose-tree white, Carroll's vision of beauty becomes subject to the same
forces that dominate reality.
Alice's youth creates the possibility of viewing an alternate world through eyes not
completely corrupted by the social conventions of reality, but her efforts to retain
Victorian manners when her new environment creates no pressures to do so, suggest how
deeply the rules of the world are impressed upon the mind during childhood. Alice's
language is steeped in the artificiality of her world. Her stilted words, "You sh'n't be
beheaded," reflect that the training of her schooling is not even abandoned in a moment
of apparent crisis (65). In many instances, Alice even tries to transfer her conception of

proper manners to this new environment. She finds it "decidedly uncivil" that the
Footman looks up at the sky all the time he is speaking (46). She seems to be almost
willing to forgive his rudeness if only he could answer her question, "But what am I to
do?" (46). Alice's rejection of the Footman's response, "Anything you like," represents
Alice's willingness to exchange one set of behaviors for another under the condition that
she is told how to behave and act, indicating that it is not the actual manners that she
values but the freedom from deciding what to do (46). It is at this moment that Alice
seems to be rejecting the opportunity for freedom of the imagination and instead opting
for the safer boundaries created by the dictates of reality.
Although Carroll succeeds in altering the content of Alice's new education, her systematic
attempt to recall her schooling further indicates that her mind has become so conditioned
to being told how to act and respond to situations, that it is unable to break out of this
trap, even when the possibility presents itself. Just after Alice recalls, "When I used to
read fairy tales, I fancied that this kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the
middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me," she realizes that "there's no
room to grow up any more here" and concludes that this means that will always "have
lessons to learn" (29). The transition of Alice's thought from fantastic stories directly to
lessons and books suggests that her imagination is never able to escape the confines of a
instruction; she believes that as a child it is her duty to be concerned with schooling (29).
She even self-imposes lessons as she "cross[es] her hands on her lap as if she were saying
lessons and began to repeat it." (16). Perhaps Alice will achieve grown-up status when
she has been so conditioned that the mantras of the educational systems become
immediate responses. It is almost as if in projecting his conception of a nonsensical
world, that the child, simply by being a product of what Carroll despises, namely a world
of socially constructed regulations, forms an obstacle to escaping reality.
Carroll faces a difficulty in allowing his own imagination to escape reality. He creates a
mocking parody of the lessons of Alice's reality in the Mock Turtle's informative speech
of the educational material of the Wonderland, but never is able to transcend the idea that
a world must be ruled by instruction. Carroll's new world might study "Reeling and
Writhing" or "Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision," instead of
the traditional subjects, but inhabitants of Wonderland are still trapped by the process of
rote which removes free thought from the educational experience (76). The rules, as the
lessons, are certainly different in this imaginary place, but only to be replaced by an
entire set of new ones. The croquet game epitomizes how Carroll can only create an
alternative reality by constructing a world based upon oppositions to that in which he
lives. For instance, in normal croquet there are distinct rules, whereas, in Wonderland
"they don't seem to have any rules in particular: at least, if there are, nobody attends to
them" (67). The new rules consist of disobeying the old ones. Perhaps fantasy can never
escape man's tendency to use his own experience as a starting point to craft change. In
this case, an author's imagination as well as those of his characters will be forever
grounded by reality. In order to examine what a world look like without rules, one must
first understand what a world looks like with rules. Alice's preoccupation with rules
materializes in her comment "that's not a regular rule: you [the King] invented it just
now" (93). Thus, even if Carroll changes the rules, Alice remains trapped in her desire to

define them, creating a further obstacle to exploring how an unlegislated land would
operate.
All of the characters which Alice encounters simply seem to be replacements of the adults
that Alice encounters in reality, and it is these figure who serve as the teachers of these
new lessons and rules. The characters continually change the rules and use language as a
weapon which Alice seems to be continually trying to understand. The Duchess is
contradictory, condescending, and hopelessly pedagogical. As the Mock Turtle stands on
the ledge of a rock to tell his story while Alice sits in front of him, the environment
mirrors that of Alice's classroom in which a teacher positions himself in front to deliver
lessosn. Tuttle even adopts a schoolmasterish tone of voices as he tells Alice, "Really you
are very dull." (75). Leach suggests that "[t]hey behave to her as adults behave to a childthey are peremptory and patronizing" (Leach 92). In creating these characters, Carroll is
unable to escape the notion that children require instruction and need adult-like figures to
enforce rules. Carroll's criticizes the tradition educational system by using Wonderland to
parody its flaws, suggesting that even in his mind he finds issues of the imagination and
reality inseparable.
The sardonic tone which accompanies Alice's observation of Wonderland's inhabitants
and customs, reflects that Carroll is only too aware of the fact that his dreamland is only a
distorted version of reality. Peter Coveney suggests that the "dream takes on a quality of
horror because Carroll "is painfully awake in his own dream" (Coveney 334). Although
Carroll attempts to veil his dissatisfaction with reality in Alice's innocence, he almost
seems to be testing Alice's consciousness of his suffering:
It was all very well to say, "drink me," but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in
a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not"; for
she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten by
wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because the would not remember the simple
rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold
it too long; if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had
never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked "poison," It is almost certain
to disagree with you, sooner or later. (11).
The insinuation of both suicide and self-inflicted pain seems an incongruous reflection
for a seven-year-old; Alice becomes a vehicle through which Carroll reveals his
preoccupation with such tortuous thoughts. As Alice proceeds to drink the bottle that is
mysteriously labeled "drink me," Carroll toys with a distorted version of attempted
suicide (11). He is able to guise his attempt in Alice's innocence, revealed in her childlike
recollections of poisoning, which leaves her unaware of the gravity of the consequences
of drinking bottle that might contain poison. It seems quite morbid that Carroll chooses to
place Alice in a situation which would cause her to even contemplate such violent
images. Rackin suggests that Carroll's particular genius "depends heavily on his uncanny
ability to enter fully the mind of childhood, to become the child who dreams our adult
dreams" (Rackin 113). Even if Alice can not fully comprehend the suggestions that

Carroll plants in her head, the author appears fully conscious of the consequences of
poisoning.
While the incident with the mysterious bottle marks Alice's initiation to Wonderland,
Carroll's decision to culminate his tale of Wonderland in a legal courtroom creates a
fitting environment to for his final attempt to use youthful imagination to escape reality.
The narrative even admits "very few girls of her [Alice's] age knew the meaning of it all,"
and by placing Alice in the pinnacle of worldly law, he implies that she too, even in her
imagination, is answerable to the rules of reality (86). The courtroom scene seems more
of a trial of the imagination rather than an investigation of the identity of the tart thief.
The Queen's directive, "Sentence first-verdict afterwards," (96) reveals Carroll's own
feelings of entrapment. He has been sentenced to growing older and living within the
rules of society only to acknowledge that the verdict has always been against the
imagination; his construction of "stuff and nonsense" appears to be precluded by a
societal conditioning against the imagination (97). It seems odd that Alice awakes to
declare this as a "wonderful dream," when moments earlier she is overcome with anger
about the injustice of the Queen and King's tyrannical court, potentially creating a serious
indictment of the reality she awakes to. A second possibility is that it is Carroll voice
pronouncing the word "wonderful," wishing just like Alice that he could respond to
society's dictates, "Hold your tongue!"-" I won't" (97) just as Alice had done minutes
earlier.
Alice's continued determination to persevere in this world of nonsense, and more
specifically, her willingness to point out its weaknesses might help to explain why Carroll
undertakes what he consciously seems to believe to be an impossible mission- to escape
reality. From the outset, Alice is characterized as believably human- she is rude,
impatient, and repeatedly nave in her observations. Yet it is her flaws that allow us to
identify with her as a representative of our own entrapment in reality. Her youth presents
an opportunity for the audience and Carroll to revisit the nave belief that there is an
escape to our everyday experience and furthermore, that with a methodical, logical
approach it is possible to understand our environment. Although Alice is frustrated by the
new reality that she encounters and its resistance to her systematic way to comprehend it,
in spite of all of her difficulties she optimistically continues her pursuit of the garden. On
her second attempt, she confidently asserts with the little golden key in hand, "Now, I'll
manage better this time" (61). In her search for escape and understanding, she becomes
"the nave champion of the doomed human quest for meaning and lost Edenic order"
(Rackin 96).
Perhaps Carroll is suggesting that in the face of an earthly surface peppered with
disappointment, anger, and frustration, adults must retain the resiliency and unaffected
consciousness of Alice. Her ability to awake and immediately go to tea, "thinking while
she ran, as well she might what a wonderful dream it had been" provides a demonstration
of this survival mechanism in operation (98). There seems to be no distinction between
her dreamlike world and her living world; her imagination neatly blends into reality,
suggesting that we too must follow Alice's example of how to deal with nonsense as we
transition from Alice's world to our own reality. Alice's inability to reflect upon

Wonderland is what allows her to energetically proceed to her next encounter. Her retort,
"Who cares for you?""You're nothing but a pack of cards!," functions as an immediate
dismissal of unfairness and injustice and brings the issues to a close (97).
If there was indeed a moral of Alice in Wonderland, believing that Carroll is only trying
to tell us that we must all retain our naive innocence in the face of reality, would be to
collapse the interpretation of his work into one of the maxims espoused by the Duchess.
Carroll appears to recognize the impossibility of such a quest and interestingly enough it
is one of the Duchess' statements that provides complications to this hypothesized moral:
'Be what you would seem to be'-or, if you'd like it put it more simply-'Never imagine
yourself otherwise that what is might appear to others that what you were or might have
been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise' (72).
The use of the world "imagine" recalls the difficulty of avoiding the reality that childhood
cannot be an eternal state, and despite our attempt to escape the experiences of reality,
they will always prevent us from recreating a state of innocence. The reality is the force
that requires us to be true to ourselves; we cannot pretend to be children and Carroll's
suicidal frustrations create consequence enough to avoid this disillusion.
Carroll makes a futile attempt to model Alice's optimistic behavior. Although it is Alice's
sister who undertakes the effort to enter Wonderland, Carroll's narrative voice appears to
pervade her thoughts. Carroll acknowledges that an adult realizes that the dream is based
in reality. It is in this way that he creates the relationship between childhood and the
imagination. As discussed earlier, like an adult, a child is unable to imagine life much
different than his current reality, but the difference is the consciousness of these
restraints. Unlike Alice, her elder sister, Lorena, can only "half believe herself in
Wonderland," and quickly identifies all of the elements and sounds of Wonderland as
ones originating in her own world (98-99). Alice's Wonderland contains these same
elements, but she is able to explore them without the awareness that each illusion has a
mundane real life parallel; she is unable to see that the Queen's shrill cries is really the
voice of the shepherd-boy. It is with a mixture of nostalgia and bitterness that Carroll
guarantees that Alice will someday find herself removed from these fantasies: "she would
feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys,
remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days" (99). This is the only
passage that Carroll truly believes it is possible to imagine anything removed from his
immediate environment, and ironically, this vision serves as an attack on imagination
because it projects the inevitable end of Alice's dreamlike fantasies. As Lorena falters in
her attempt, it appears that childhood presents the opportunity to believe that one has the
freedom to imagine before it becomes evident that the only illusion is that which the child
possesses: the belief the imagination is separate from reality.

THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Plot Overview
Alice sits in her armchair at home, drowsily watching her pet kitten, Kitty, as she
unravels a ball of string. She snatches Kitty up and begins telling her about LookingGlass House, an imaginary world on the other side of the mirror where everything is
backward. Alice suddenly finds herself on the mantelpiece and steps through the mirror
into Looking-Glass House. On the other side of the mirror, Alice discovers a room similar
to her own but with several strange differences. The chessmen stand in the fireplace in
pairs, oblivious to Alices presence. She comes to the aid of the White Queens daughter,
Lily, but realizes that the chess pieces cannot see her. Alice becomes distracted by a book
on the shelf, in which she reads a nonsensical poem entitled Jabberwocky. Frustrated
by the strange poem, she sets off to explore the rest of the house.
Alice leaves the house and spots a beautiful garden in the distance, but every time she
tries to follow the path to the garden she finds herself back at the door to the house.
Confused, she wonders aloud how to get to the garden, and to her surprise a Tiger-lily
responds. Other flowers join in the conversation, and several of them start to insult Alice.
Alice learns from the flowers that the Red Queen is nearby, and Alice sets off to meet her.
Alice meets the Red Queen, and the two engage in conversation, but the Red Queen
constantly corrects Alices etiquette. Alice looks out over a field, sees a great game of
chess in progress, and tells the Red Queen that she would like to join. The Red Queen
tells Alice she can stand in as a White Pawn and marks a course for Alice, explaining that
when she reaches the end of the game, Alice will become a Queen.
Alice inexplicably finds herself on a train with a Goat, a Beetle, and a man dressed in
white paper. They each nag Alice until the train eventually lurches to a halt. Alice finds
herself in a forest, conversing with a chicken sized Gnat, who tells her about the different
insects of Looking-Glass World. After learning the names of the insects, Alice sets off
again and discovers that she has forgotten the names of things, even her own name. She
comes across a Fawn, who has also forgotten the names of things, and the two press on
through the forest.
When Alice and the Fawn emerge from the forest, their memories of names come back,
and the Fawn runs away in fear of Alice. Alice soldiers on alone until she meets
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, an identical pair of heavyset men. The twins ignore Alices
repeated requests for directions and recite a poem instead. Tweedledum and Tweedledee
notice the Red King sleeping nearby and explain to Alice that she exists only as a figment
of the Red Kings dream. Upset at first, Alice decides that the two of them speak
nonsense. A fight spontaneously erupts between Tweedledum and Tweedledee over a
broken rattle. A giant crow swoops down and interrupts the fight, sending Tweedledum
and Tweedledee running.
Alice slips away and encounters the White Queen, who explains that time moves
backward in Looking-Glass World. As they speak, the White Queen plasters her finger,
then screams in pain, and finally pricks her finger on a brooch. After explaining to Alice
that she used to practice the impossible daily, she transforms into a sheep in a shop. The
Sheep asks a disoriented Alice what she would like to buy. Though the shop is full of

curious things, Alice finds that she cannot fix her eye on any one thing. The Sheep asks
Alice if she knows how to row. Before she knows it, Alice finds herself in a boat with the
Sheep, rowing down a stream. The boat crashes into something and sends Alice tumbling
to the ground. When she stands she finds herself back in the shop. She purchases an egg
from the Sheep, who places the egg on a shelf. Alice reaches for the egg and finds herself
back in the forest, where the egg has transformed into Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty sits on a wall and criticizes Alice for having a name that doesnt mean
anything, explaining that all names should mean something. Humpty Dumpty treats Alice
rudely, boasting that he can change the meanings of words at will. When Alice learns this,
she asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words of the nonsense poem Jabberwocky to
her. He defines the words of the first stanza and then recites a portion of his own poem.
He abruptly bids her goodbye, and Alice storms off, annoyed. All of a sudden, a loud
crash shakes the forest and she watches soldiers and horsemen run by.
Alice comes across the White King, who explains to her that he has sent all of his horses
and men, presumably to put the shattered Humpty Dumpty back together again. The
Kings messenger Haigha approaches and informs them that the Lion and the Unicorn are
doing battle in the town. Alice sets off with her new companions toward the town to
watch the battle. They catch up with another of the Kings messengers, Hatta, who
explains the events of the fight thus far. The Lion and Unicorn stop battling and the White
King calls for refreshments to be served. The White King tells Alice to cut the cake, but
she finds that every time she slices the cake the pieces fuse back together. The Unicorn
instructs Alice that Looking-glass cakes must be passed around first before they are
sliced. Alice distributes the cake, but before they begin eating, a great noise interrupts,
and when Alice looks up, she finds herself alone again.
The Red Knight gallops up to Alice and takes her as a prisoner. The White Knight arrives
at Alices side and vanquishes the Red Knight. Alice and the White Knight walk and talk
together, and Alice finds a friend in the eccentric chessman. He promises to bring her
safely to the last square where she will become a queen. As they walk, he tells her about
all of his inventions before sending her off with a song. She crosses the final brook and
finds herself sitting on the bank with a crown on her head.
Alice finds herself in the company of the Red Queen and the White Queen, who question
her relentlessly before falling asleep in her lap. The sound of their snoring resembles
music. The sound is so distracting that Alice doesnt notice when the two queens
disappear. Alice discovers a castle with a huge door marked QUEEN ALICE. Alice
goes through the door and finds a huge banquet in her honor. She sits and begins eating,
but the party quickly devolves into total chaos. Overwhelmed, Alice pulls away the
tablecloth and grabs the Red Queen.
Alice wakes up from her dream to find herself holding Kitty. She wonders aloud whether
or not her adventures where her own dream or the dream of the Red King.

Character List
Alice - The seven-and-a-half-year-old protagonist of the story. Alices dream leads to her
adventures in Looking-Glass World. Alice has set perceptions of the world and becomes
frustrated when Looking-Glass World challenges those perceptions. Alice has good
intentions, but has trouble befriending any of the creatures that populate Looking-Glass
World.
Red Queen - A domineering, officious woman who brings Alice into the chess game.
The Red Queen is civil but unpleasant, hounding Alice about her lack of etiquette and
general knowledge.
White Queen - An untidy, disorderly mess of a woman. The White Queen explains the
properties of Looking-Glass World, including the reversal of time and the need to believe
in the impossible.
Red King - The sleeping King. Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell Alice that she is not
real and exists only as part of the Red Kings dream.
White King - The White King sends his horses and men after Humpty Dumpty after his
fall. The White King takes words literally. He is completely helpless and is terrified of the
Lion and the Unicorn.
White Knight - A kind and noble companion who rescues Alice from the Red Knight
and leads her to the final square. The White Knight is old with shaggy hair, pale blue
eyes, and a gentle face. He is an eccentric who has invented many bizarre contraptions.
Humpty Dumpty - A contemptuous, egg-like man based on the nursery rhyme character.
Humpty Dumpty sits on a wall and treats Alice rudely. He explains the meaning of
Jabberwocky to Alice but changes the meanings of words.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee - A pair of identical little fat men dressed as schoolboys.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee get along well and finish each others thoughts, but wind
up fighting each other over a broken rattle.
Unicorn - A mythical beast that resembles a horse with a long horn. The Unicorn battles
the Lion. The Unicorn believes Alice to be a monster and tells Alice that he will believe
in her if she agrees to believe in him.
The Lion - The Lion does battle with the Unicorn in the town. The Lions actions imitate
Alices nursery rhyme about the Lion and the Unicorn.
Haigha and Hatta - The White Kings messengers. Haigha is the March Hare and Hatta
is the Mad Hatter from Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Their madness is under
control in this story.
The Sheep - An old shopkeeper. The Sheep is cranky and rude to Alice. The White
Queen transforms into the Sheep.
The Gnat - Alices companion on the train and in the wood. The Gnat grows from
normal insect size to become as large as a chicken. He points out potential puns and
wordplay to Alice and always seems to be sad.
The Fawn - Alices companion through her travels through the wood, where she forgets
the names of things. The Fawn is beautiful but runs away when it realizes that Alice is a
human and might pose a threat.
The Red Knight - A knight who attempts to capture Alice. The Red Knight is captured
by the White Knight.

The Tiger-lily - A talking flower. The Tiger-lily speaks civilly to Alice and has some
authority over the other flowers.
The Rose - A talking flower that speaks rudely to Alice.
The Violet - A talking flower that also speaks rudely to Alice.
The Daisies - Talking flowers. The Daisies are extremely chatty and only quiet down
when Alice threatens to pick them.
Lily - The White Queens daughter. Alice takes Lilys place as the White Pawn in the
chess game.
The Goat - A passenger on the train with Alice.
The man in white paper - A passenger on the train with Alice.
Frog - The old footman at Alices castle.
Analysis of Major Characters
Alice
In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice is a child not yet eight years old. She has been
raised in a wealthy Victorian household and is interested in good manners, which she
demonstrates with her pet, Kitty. Alice treats others with kindness and courtesy, as
evidenced in her various interactions with the Looking-Glass creatures. She has an
extremely active imagination but seeks order in the world around her. Alice fights to
understand the fantastic dream world that has sprung from her own imagination, trying
her best to order her life experiences and connect them to the unusual situations she
encounters in Looking-Glass World. Alices maturation transforms into a game of chess,
in which her growth into womanhood becomes a quest to become a queen.
Alice feels lonely, which motivates her to seek out company that she can sympathize and
identify with. She creates a structured imaginary world that she can control, and creates
Looking-Glass World in order to connect with other individuals and seek out company
that she feels comfortable with. She desires a family and in the beginning of the book
uses her pets as a substitute family in the real world. Alice knows that these are not
genuine relationships, as seen when she breaks off conversation with her cats to have an
aside to herself. Alice creates Looking-Glass World and desires to become a queen
because she craves a sense of control over her surroundings. She relates to the residents
of Looking-Glass World in the same way that she relates to her pets, taking on the
manner of a good-natured mother figure who behaves with solicitude and deference
despite her authority. Alice has occasional bouts of sadness and loneliness throughout her
travels, when she acknowledges to herself that the characters that populate Looking-Glass
World are not real and cannot show her true compassion or provide her with real
companionship.
The Red Queen
The Red Queen behaves like the quintessential Victorian governess. She is overbearing,
meticulously obsessive about manners, and civil in a self-righteous and supercilious way.
Like the vast majority of the characters in Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen
makes definitive statements with little regard for an abiding logic that would support
them. Her assertions are often arbitrary recitations of strict behavioral advice, such as,
Speak when youre spoken to! When Alice reveals the inadequacy of the logic behind
the Red Queens statements, the Red Queen asserts her arbitrary position of authority as a

justification. The Red Queens constant badgering of and competition with Alice
indicates profound feelings of antagonism. She fits into the framework of Alices dream
as representative arbitrary authority, serving as a caricature of an overbearing governess
figure at odds with her young charges.
The White Knight
Carroll modeled the character of the White Knight after himself, and the White Knights
compassionate behavior toward Alice demonstrates Carrolls feelings toward the real-life
Alice Liddell. Like the White Knight, Carroll had shaggy hair, blue eyes, and a mild face.
Also like Carroll, the White Knight has a penchant for inventing and compulsively
preparing for any kind of contingency, no matter how ridiculous. The White Knight
sweeps in at a moment of crisis to rescue Alice from the clutches of the Red Knight,
before he helpfully escorts her to the point at which she no longer needs protection and
can claim her new title of queen. As he guides her, he sings a song that conjures up
feelings of wistful longing, calling attention to the idea of Alices transformation into a
queen as a metaphor for her sexual awakening into womanhood. The White Knight
represents a figure from her childhood who can bring her to the point at which she
reaches adulthood before he must let go. The scene between the White Knight and Alice
is marked by feelings of nostalgia tinged with regret, since Alice must eventually leave
the White Knight and claim her new role alone.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Chess as Metaphor for Fate
Alices journey through Looking-Glass World is guided by a set of rigidly constructed
rules that guide her along her path to a preordained conclusion. Within the framework of
the chess game, Alice has little control over the trajectory of her life, and outside forces
influence her choices and actions. Just as Alice exerts little control of her movement
toward becoming a queen, she has no power over her inevitable maturation and
acceptance of womanhood. At the beginning of the game, Alice acts as a pawn with
limited perspective of the world around her. She has limited power to influence outcomes
and does not fully understand the rules of the game, so an unseen hand guides her along
her journey, constructing different situations and encounters that push her along toward
her goal. Though she wants to become a queen, she must follow the predetermined rules
of the chess game, and she frequently discovers that every step she takes toward her goal
occurs because of outside forces acting upon her, such as the mysterious train ride and
her rescue by the White Knight. By using the chess game as the guiding principle of the
narrative, Carroll suggest that a larger force guides individuals through life and that all
events are preordained. In this deterministic concept of life, free will is an illusion and
individual choices are bound by rigidly determined rules and guided by an overarching,
unseen force.
Language as a Means to Order the World
In Through the Looking-Glass, language has the capacity to anticipate and even cause
events to happen. Alice recites nursery rhymes on several occasions, which causes

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, and the Lion and the Unicorn to perform
the actions that she describes in her rhymes. Rather than recording and describing events
that have already happened, words give rise to actions simply by being spoken.
Tweedledum and Tweedledees quarrel begins only after Alice recites the rhyme about the
broken rattle. Similarly, Humpty Dumptys fall does not happen until Alice describes the
events in the classic nursery rhyme. Language covers actions in Looking-Glass World,
rather than simply describing them. The flowers reinforce this principle by explaining
that a tree can scare enemies away with its bark. In our language, there is no
relationship between the bark of a dog and the bark of a tree, but in Looking-Glass
World, this linguistic similarity results in a functional common ground. Trees that have
bark are thus able to bark just as fiercely as dogs.
The Loneliness of Growing Up
Throughout her adventures, Alice feels an inescapable sense of loneliness from which she
can find no relief. Before she enters Looking-Glass World, her only companions are her
cats, to whom she attributes human qualities to keep her company. Once she enters
Looking-Glass World, she seeks compassion and understanding from the individuals that
she meets, but she is frequently disappointed. The flowers and Humpty Dumpty treat her
rudely, the Red Queen is brusque, and the Fawn flees from her once it realizes that she is
a human. She receives little compassion from others and often becomes sad. The one
character who shows her compassion is the White Knight, who must leave her when she
reaches the eighth square and must take on her role of Queen. Alices dreams deal with
the anxieties of growing up and becoming a young woman. Since Alice believes that
loneliness is an inherent part of growing up, even in her dreams she must face the
transition into womanhood alone.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to
develop and inform the texts major themes.
Inverse Reflections
Many of the basic assumptions that Alice makes about her environment are reversed in
Looking-Glass World. Outcomes precede events, cakes are passed out before being cut,
destinations are reached by walking in the opposite direction, and characters remember
the future and think best while standing on their heads. These strange phenomena
challenge the way Alice thinks and in some cases expose the arbitrary nature of her
understanding of her own world. Many of Alices experiences exist as meaningless
parodies of aspects of her own familiar world back home. Alice becomes aware of a new,
inverted perspective on life as she travels forward and backward through Looking-Glass
World.
Dream
Alice falls asleep at the beginning of Through the Looking-Glass, just as she did at the
outset of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, so that the resulting fantastical adventures
occur in her dreams. The story follows Alice through the various episodes of LookingGlass World so that we experience her adventures through her impressions of LookingGlass House, the chess game, and her quest to become a queen. The characters and
scenes that she encounters exist as a combination of her memories and impressions of the

waking world and the random, illogical inventions of her dreaming mind. Carroll
emphasizes the dream motif by basing some of the denizens of Looking-Glass World on
individuals from the life of his real-life muse, Alice Liddell. For example, the Red Queen
is based on Alices governess Miss Prickett, while the White Knight is closely based upon
Lewis Carroll himself.
Chess
The chess game that Alice participates in becomes the organizing mechanism for her
adventure in Looking-Glass World. Alices journey closely follows the rules of a
traditional game of chess. The perspectives and movements of the individual characters
correspond to the movements of their respective chess pieces. The Red and White Queens
have an unlimited view of the board, since queens can move in any direction and as many
spaces as they want in a single turn. The Red and White Kings can only move one space
at a time in any direction, so while they have the same perspective as the queens, they
have limited mobility. This limitation explains why the White King cannot follow the
White Queen as she runs away from the other chessmen, since she moves too fast. As a
pawn, Alice can only move forward once space at a time, with the exception of her first
move, in which she can move two spaces. Like a pawn, Alice can only see one square
ahead of her. When she reaches the final square and becomes a queen, she can see the
whole board because now she has the full mobility of the queen chess piece. Alices move
to take the Red Queen results in a checkmate of the Red King, ending the chess game and
causing Alice to wake up.
Train Imagery
Trains and train imagery appear frequently to underscore the feeling of unstoppable
forward motion that governs Alices journey toward womanhood. The Red Kings
somnolent snoring resembles a train engine, while the White Queen screams like a train
whistle before she pricks her finger. Alice skips forward several spaces when she finds
herself unexpectedly on a train, shooting through the forest toward her destination and
mimicking Alices forward movement as a pawn in the chess game. The train imagery
suggests the irreversible and unstoppable movement toward adulthood that Alice
becomes subject to in her journey through Looking-Glass World.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas
or concepts.
The Rushes
The rushes that Alice pulls from the water in Chapter V represent dreams. Rushes are
plans that grow in riverbeds and poke through the surface of the water. The rapid fading
of the rushes sweet scene after being picked corresponds to the fleetingness of the
memory of a dream after a person wakes up.
The Sleeping Red King
Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell Alice that she is only a creation of the Red Kings
dream, which implies that Looking-Glass World is not a construction of Alices dream.
The Red King becomes a divine figure who dreams up all of Alices adventures, fostering
the idea that she does not actually have any identity or agency beyond what she is
allowed in the context of the dream. The idea that we are all just aspects of the dream of a

divine power comes from Bishop Berkeley, a philosopher who wrote during Carrolls
lifetime and who believed that man and the universe exist as part of Gods imagination.
Chapter I: Looking-Glass House
Summary
Alice rests at home in an armchair, talking drowsily to herself as her black kitten, Kitty,
plays with a ball of string at her feet. Alice lovingly scolds the kitten for unraveling the
ball of string that she had been winding up. She goes on to scold Kittys mother, Dinah,
who is busy bathing the white kitten Snowdrop. Alice begins an imaginative conversation
with Kitty, pretending that her pet talks back, and asks her to pretend that she is the Red
Queen in a chess game. Alice attempts to arrange Kittys forelegs to better resemble the
chess piece. When Kitty does not comply, Alice holds her up to the mirror above the
mantle and threatens to put Kitty into the world on the other side of the mirror, which she
calls Looking-Glass House. Alice thinks about what Looking-Glass House must be
like, wondering aloud to Kitty if there might be a way to break through to the other side
of the mirror. All of a sudden, Alice finds herself on the mantle, staring into the mirror.
She magically steps through the mirror into Looking-Glass House.
On the other side of the mirror, Alice looks around and finds that the room she is standing
in resembles the mirror image of the room in her own house. However, several parts of
the room look quite different. The pictures on the wall near the mirror seem to be alive,
and the mantle clock has the face of a grinning little man.
Alice notices a group of chessmen inside the fireplace among the cinders, walking in line
two-by-two. Alice examines them closely and determines that she is invisible to them.
She hears a squeak behind her. Alice wheels around to find a White Pawn on the table.
Out of the fireplace charges the White Queen, who knocks over the White King in her
haste, rushing to grab her child. Alice helpfully lifts the White Queen onto the table, and
the White Queen gasps in surprise as Alice grabs the Queens child Lily. The White King
follows, but he quickly grows impatient. Alice lifts him up, dusts him off, and places him
down next to the White Queen. The White King lies on his back, stunned in surprise,
which causes Alice to realize that she is invisible to the chessmen. Once the White King
recovers, he pulls out a pencil and begins jotting his experience down, but Alice snatches
the pencil from him and writes something down in his book. The White King comments
that he must get a new book, since strange words seem to appear on the pages of his
current one.
Alice picks up one of the books from the table and discovers that the text is backward.
She holds the book up to the mirror to read it properly and reads the poem on the page.
The poem, entitled Jabberwocky, describes a knights travels to vanquish a hideous
monster known as the Jabberwock. Perplexed by the poem, Alice sets the book down and
decides to explore the rest of the house. As she leaves the room and begins heading down
the stairs, she finds herself floating until she finally catches hold of the door-post to the
door that leads outside of Looking-Glass House.
Analysis
In his stories, Carroll blurs the boundaries between being awake and being asleep so that
it becomes difficult to tell where reality ends and dreaming begins. At the beginning of
the chapter, Alice enjoys a drowsy winter nap near the fire. She leaves her chair only to

snatch up Kitty and place her on her knee. Alice dozes off in this position, and her step
through the mirror happens in her dream. Since she is only half asleep, Alices
experiences combine elements from the waking world and her dreams. The dream motif
of Through the Looking-Glass differs from the one found in Alices Adventures in
Wonderland, for here Alice exercises some control over what she encounters in her
fantasy world. Alices repeated pleas to Kitty to play pretend emphasize her desire to
exert some control over her imagination.
Alice discovers that the room on the other side of the mirror is nearly identical to her old
room, showing the motif of inversion that reappears throughout the text. The alternate
dimension is not just a mirror image, but a comprehensive inversion of reality. In
Looking-Glass House, Alice no longer needs a fire, since the winter of the real world
becomes summer in the imagined world, where the gardens are in bloom and the trees are
filled with leaves. Even the inanimate objects in Alices old room, such as the pictures
and the mantle clock, spring to life. Alice appears invisible to the chess pieces, which is
one aspect of the inversion that occurs in Looking-Glass House. In Alices world, she is
alive while the chess pieces are inanimate, but Looking-Glass World belongs to the chess
pieces, where they have a working order to their lives. Like the chessboard, their lives are
highly symmetrical and controlled.
Alices invisibility suggests that she maintains a godlike power over the chessmen of
Looking-Glass World, which stems from the fact that the whole universe exists as part of
her imagination. Alice picks up the White King as if she were a divine power
manipulating the lives of the chess pieces. This establishes the idea of the chessboard as a
plane of existence upon which individuals are positioned like chess pieces and moved
around according to predetermined rules. Inside the house, Alices invisibility allows her
to be an unseen hand, but the image of the chessboard gains its full significance in the
next chapter when she joins the chess game outside. There, Alice becomes a chess piece
herself, manipulated by an unseen hand, presumably the authorial hand of Carroll. The
imposition of this hand starts to become apparent when Alice loses control over her body
and floats down the stairs, propelled forward toward her destiny by the unseen hand of
the author.
Chapter II: The Garden of Live Flowers
Summary
Once outside, Alice climbs a nearby hill to get a better look at the garden near the house.
However, every time she begins to follow the path to the hill, she finds herself back at the
door to the house. Dismayed, she mentions her frustration to Tiger-lily, who surprises her
by responding in perfect English. The Tiger-lily explains that all flowers can talk. The
Rose chimes in and mentions that Alice does not look very clever. Alice asks them if they
feel at all vulnerable. They explain to her that they are protected by a nearby tree that will
bark at any approaching threats. The Daisies begin caterwauling and Alice silences them
by threatening to pick them.
The Rose and the Violet continue to insult Alice, but the Tiger-lily reprimands them for
their rudeness. Alice learns from the flowers that there is another person like her in the
garden. They describe the Red Queen, who now looks human and stands a head taller
than Alice. The Rose advises Alice to walk the other way, but Alice sets off toward the

Red Queen, ending up back at the door of Looking-Glass House. Once she sets off in the
opposite direction, she eventually reaches the Red Queen.
The Red Queen is friendly but overbearing when she strikes up a conversation with Alice.
Alice explains her plight to the Red Queen and mentions the garden, which prompts the
Red Queen to remark that she has seen gardens that would make this one seem like a
wilderness. When Alice mentions the hill, the Red Queen states that she has seen hills to
make this hill look like a valley. Frustrated, Alice tells the Red Queen that she speaks
nonsense, but the Queen responds that she has heard nonsense that would make her
claims seem as sensible as a dictionary. The Red Queen takes Alice to the hill, where she
notices that the surrounding countryside resembles a giant chessboard. Alice spots a game
of chess happening on the chessboard and expresses her desire to join the game. The Red
Queen tells Alice that she may stand in for the Tiger-lily as a White Pawn. The two begin
a brisk run but remain in the same place. Once finished with their run, the Red Queen
explains the chess game to Alice. Alice starts at the second square and must travel
through the other squares. A different character owns each square, and once Alice reaches
the eighth square she will become a queen herself. With a few final words of advice, the
Red Queen bids Alice goodbye and disappears.
Analysis
Just like in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice acts as an explorer in Looking-Glass
World, recalling other explorers discovering new territories in the late Victorian era. Like
the English Imperialist explorers of Carrolls time, Alice intrudes on foreign lands with
preconceived notions about language, manners, and the way the world works. When she
meets the living flowers, she discovers not only that others do not share her assumptions,
but that the native population perceives her as foolish. Alices lack of knowledge about
Looking-Glass World creates a culture clash in which her confusion over the flowers
explanation of why trees have bark and boughs inspires scorn in the flowers.
Alice fails to understand that in Looking-Glass World she must do everything backward.
She gets confused when the Rose advises her to walk the other way to reach the Red
Queen. Alice relates to the Red Queen how she is lost because she does not realize that
in the mirror one has to move away from an object to get closer to it. The path seems to
actively punish her for failing to understand the properties of Looking-Glass World,
deliberately rearranging itself to get her off track. The principles of inversion do not
solely affect space and distance, but also movement. The faster Alice moves, the less
distance she covers, so that when she runs she never seems to leave her initial position.
Alice becomes a pawn in the game of chess and discovers that Looking-Glass World
closely follows the strict rules of chess. Alice can only move forward one square at a
time, despite the fact that she seems to wield a degree of imaginative control over
Looking-Glass World. While the Queen seems to vanish because she can travel quickly
across the board, just as a Queen has greater mobility in a game of chess. As a pawn,
Alice has much more restricted mobility and line of vision. Alice is not only a pawn in
the game of chess, but also in the text of the book. The author has absolute control over
Alices actions and can move her around at will in the context of the story as if she were a
pawn.
Chapter III: Looking-Glass Insects

Summary
Alice surveys her surroundings, spotting a group of elephants in the distance that seem to
be pollinating flowers and making honey. She sets off in the direction of the elephants,
but changes her mind and starts heading down the hill in the other direction. Before she
knows it, she finds herself riding inside a carriage, and she explains to the Guard present
that she doesnt have a ticket. She hears various voices in the carriage badgering her, as
the Guard examines her with a telescope, a microscope, and opera glasses. The other
passengers in the carriage begin to discuss Alice. A man dressed entirely in white paper
comments that she ought to know where her ticket is, while a goat interjects that she
should know the location of the ticket office. A beetle comments that Alice will have to
make the return journey as luggage. Alice hears a hoarse voice in her ear that suggests
various jokes she can make using wordplay. As the train prepares to jump over a brook,
Alice speaks back to the voice. The train jumps and Alice finds herself sitting quietly in
the shade of a tree.
The strange voice turns out to be the voice of a gnat, who has grown to the size of a
chicken since they landed in the forest. Alice and the Gnat discuss the difference between
the insects in Alices world and Looking-Glass World. He explains that the horsefly
becomes a rocking horsefly, the dragonfly becomes a snapdragon fly, and the butterfly
becomes a Bread-and-butter-fly. Alice wonders what would happen to the Bread-andbutter-fly when it cannot find its chosen diet of weak tea and cream. The Gnat informs
her that this is a regular occurrence, which means that Bread-and-butter-flies frequently
die. The Gnat then warns Alice that she will lose her name if she travels into the wood.
The Gnat discusses lost names and then vanishes as mysteriously as he appeared.
Alice journeys into the wood and finds that she cannot remember the name of anything.
In her confusion, she thinks that her name begins with the letter L. She comes across a
Fawn, who helps her through the wood. Once they exit the forest, the Fawn runs away
now that it remembers that it is a fawn and Alice is a human. Alone again, Alice notices a
series of signs pointing the way to Tweedledum and Tweedledees house. She heads off in
that direction but bumps into them before she reaches her destination.
Analysis
Alice fully understands the lack of control that she exerts over herself and where she
wishes to go in Looking-Glass World. Despite her strong attraction to the elephants, she
pulls back from going to meet them in favor of remaining on the chessboard and
following the rules of the game. Back on the chessboard, her movements become
measured and predictable. Alices train ride allows her to skip the third square,
propelling her forward two spaces, mimicking the fact that pawns move two spaces
forward on their first move. From this point on, Alices movement and geographical
position are charted in the chess diagram provided at the beginning of the book.
Alice and the Gnat discuss in detail how ones name should relate to ones identity or
physical characteristics. As they discuss the names of different insects in their respective
worlds, the Gnat asks Alice about the purpose of names if the insects do not respond to
the names when called by them. Alice explains that the names are not necessarily for
animals and objects to identify themselves by and respond to, but rather, names help
those with powers of language to label, classify, and organize what they experience. In
Looking-Glass World, humans are not the only species with powers of language, which

changes Alices perceptions about the act of naming and the properties of names. Alices
interactions with the Fawn are initially friendly, but he bolts upon learning that it is a
Fawn and she is a human child. Alice discovers that names do not simply label, but
convey information about how something operates in the world in relation to other things.
The Bread-and-butter-fly, as its name suggests, lives on weak tea with cream, and Fawns
fear humans, their conditioned enemies.
The Fawns fear of Alice suggests Carrolls preoccupation with Darwins theory of
evolution. Carroll was a deeply religious man who felt threatened by Charles Darwins
research on evolution, which was published at the same time that Carroll was writing. To
Carroll, the theory of evolution challenged the Christian belief in a harmonious universe
created by God in the manner described in the book of Genesis. As in Genesis, the forest
resembles Eden, in which men and animals coexisted harmoniously. Alice and the Fawn
exit the forest just as Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden after tasting from the Tree
of Knowledge. Just like the story of the Fall of Eden, the Fawn becomes afraid once it
remembers that Alice is a human and that she presents a threat to his safety. The reference
to the Fall calls attention to Carrolls anxiety about Darwins theories of evolution, which
in his perception sought to undo the idea of a harmonious universe that might bring about
a second Fall.
Chapter IV: Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Summary
Alice approaches the portly twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who stand side by side
with their arms around each others shoulders. Upon seeing them, Alice begins reciting a
poem that she knows about them. The poem describes Tweedledee and Tweedledum
fighting over a broken rattle until a crow frightens them, causing them to forget their
argument. They deny that this has ever happened, and though they ignore Alices
questions about how to get out of the wood, they do extend their hands to her in greeting.
Alice does not want to choose one over the other, so she grabs each mans hand and the
three begin dancing in a ring. After a short dance, they stop, and though Alice continues
to ask how to get out of the wood, Tweedledee and Tweedledum ignore her.
Tweedledee begins reciting The Walrus and the Carpenter, a poem that describes the
story of a Walrus and a Carpenter who trick a group of young oysters into leaving their
home underwater and coming to shore with them. Once the oysters get to shore, the
Walrus and the Carpenter eat them. When Tweedledee finishes, Alice states that she
prefers the Walrus because he feels sympathy for the oysters. Tweedledee points out that
the Walrus ate more oysters than the Carpenter, and Alice changes her mind, stating her
new preference for the Carpenter. Tweedledum observes that the Carpenter ate as many
oysters as he could, which causes Alice to doubt her feelings.
As she tries to sort out her feelings, Alice becomes distracted by the Red King sleeping
under a tree and snoring like a train engine. Tweedledee tells Alice that the Red King is
dreaming about her, and if he stops, she will vanish. Alice starts to cry at the thought that
she is real, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum try to comfort her by telling her that her
tears are not real.
Alice decides that Tweedledum and Tweedledee are talking nonsense and that she is
indeed real. Alice changes the subject and starts to leave when Tweedledee grabs her

wrists and points to a broken rattle on the ground. Tweedledum recognizes it as his new
rattle, and explodes in anger while Tweedledee cowers in fear. Tweedledee calms down
and the two agree to a battle to determine ownership of the rattle. Alice helps them put on
their battle gear, but before they can begin fighting, a great crow comes and scares them
off, and Alice slips away into the wood alone.
Analysis
Tweedledum and Tweedledee are mirror images of one another, reintroducing the theme
of inversion. With the exception of their names, the two little fat men are identical in
looks, manner, and stance. They exhibit perfect symmetry, standing together with their
arms around each other, so that when they extend their free hands they each reflect the
others body position. Their conversation also displays a symmetrical position designated
by Tweedledees favorite expression, contrariwise. Contrariwise functions as a
transitional word that flips the premise of the conversation. Tweedledee usually addresses
the other side of whatever Tweedledum just said. The twins reversal of language
becomes apparent in the following exchange with Alice:
TWEEDLEDUM: I know what youre thinking about . . . but it isnt so, nohow.
TWEEDLEDEE: Contrariwise . . . if it was so, it might be . . . Thats logic.
The inversion motif appears on a larger scale in the fight between Tweedledee and
Tweedledum, since it appears at the beginning of the chapter in Alices recitation and
ends the chapter as an actual event. Their scripted quarrel reveals the power of language
to affect outcomes. Language has an almost magical effect on Tweedledee and
Tweedledum in creating a rattle that did not exist before the two met Alice. Language
also seems to cause their battle. Tweedledum and Tweedledee must play out the events of
Alices rhyme, and their lives are destined to imitate the events in the poem.
The episode with the sleeping Red King causes Alice to question whether or not she
actually exists. The possibility that she may be a figment of the Red Kings dream
complicates her already slippery hold on reality. Tweedledees suggestion questions the
stability of reality itself. Alice has already experienced the loss of her name, a
fundamental aspect of her sense of self. Here, she loses the security of her material
existence in the world. If the Red King is in fact dreaming Alice into existence, then he is
the only thing in Looking-Glass World that truly exists. The only way to test this
hypothesis would be to wake the Red King up, but if he has imagined Alice,
Tweedledum, and Tweedledee, none of them would be able to ask him about it, since they
exist only in his dreams and thus cannot affect his waking life. Even Alices emotions are
artificial, since her tears are only real to her. Though the tears serve as evidence of real
emotion, that real emotion exists as a figment of the Kings dream.
The episode of the Red Kings dream opens up greater implications for Alice and the
readers about reality and the nature of God. The presence of the Red King suggests the
notion that no person actually exists, but lives solely as a fragment of a divine
imagination. The chessboard motif makes sense as a tool for organizing the story since it
functions as an allegory for human life in general. The characters in the story live a
deterministic existence in which they have no free will and move about according to the
will of their creator. Free will is an illusion in this world, since the residents of LookingGlass World must follow the rules of the chess game in all of their actions. The idea of

free will as an illusion challenges our understanding of Alices adventures, since we have
understood that they exist as part of Alices own imagination. By introducing the
possibility that Alice acts under the manipulation of a larger divine force, Carroll presents
the idea that human life exists as an abstraction of the imagination of a larger divine
force.
Chapter V: Wool and Water
Summary
As Alice runs through the forest, she comes across a shawl blowing about in front of her.
She grabs the shawl and bumps into the White Queen, who has been chasing through the
wood after her missing shawl. In thanks, the White Queen offers Alice a job as her maid,
promising twopence a week, and jam every other day. Alice respectfully declines. The
White Queen tells Alice that she lives backward and remembers events before they
happen. She goes on to inform Alice that the Kings Messenger will be in prison the week
after next, that his trial begins next Wednesday, and that his crime will come last of all.
As the two discuss the merits of punishment for a crime that may not be committed, the
White Queen starts screaming like an engine whistle. She tells Alice she will prick her
finger, and then pricks it as she refastens her shawl.
Alice feels lonely and begins to cry. The White Queen cheers her up by telling her to
consider things such as her age before admitting that she is over one hundred years old.
When Alice states that to live to a hundred is impossible, the White Queen counters that
Alice cannot believe the impossible because she has not had any practice. The White
Queens shawl blows away again, and she chases after it over a brook. As Alice crosses
the brook to catch up with her, the White Queen transforms into a sheep, and Alice finds
herself suddenly in a shop.
The Sheep asks Alice what she would like to buy and Alice begins looking around the
shop. Though filled with curious items, every shelf that Alice sets her eyes upon appears
to be empty. The Sheep then tells Alice she must begin feathering, which means
rowing. Alice looks around and finds herself in a boat with the Sheep on a river. Alice
rows until the boat reaches sweet-scented rushes, which she pulls up from the water and
lays at her feet. She begins rowing again, but the oar gets caught, jarring the boat so that
Alice falls down to the floor of the boat. When she stands up again, Alice finds herself
back in the shop, where the Sheep asks her again what she would like to buy. Alice pays
for an egg, which the Sheep places on a shelf for her. Every time Alice moves toward the
egg on the shelf, it seems to get progressively farther away from her. She continues to
walk toward the egg as the shop transforms back into the wood.
Analysis
Time moves backward in Looking-Glass World, further challenging the assumption that
people have control over the choices they make. Time does not move backward toward a
final point of origin. Instead, characters move forward while the order of events moves
backward. The White Queen illustrates this principle by explaining that the Kings
Messenger will be sentenced before he commits his crime. Her wounds heal and she
experiences pain before she becomes injured. All of the characters, the White Queen
included, remember both the past and the future. They have knowledge of events
before they happen, which reinforces the deterministic aspect of Looking-Glass World.

Causal relationships are inverted, so that every effect experienced leads back to a cause
that eventually occurs. Characters commit actions for which they have already
experienced the consequences. Because of this, the concept of free will in Looking-Glass
World becomes tenuous at best.
As the White Queen attempts to cheer Alice up, she points some of the arbitrary
conventions that Alice lives by. The White Queen chastises Alice for refusing to believe
that she is over a hundred years old on the grounds that it is impossible. Alice does not
know what is possible in this fantasy world, especially since her adventures thus far have
repeatedly challenged her preconceived expectation. Even under the assumption that
Alices doubts are justified, the White Queens claim to be a hundred years old is not
impossible, merely unlikely. Regardless, Alice should know by now that individuals in
Looking-Glass World are capable of doing the impossible.
Chapter VI: Humpty Dumpty
Summary
Alice approaches the egg, which has grown large and transformed into Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty idly sits on a wall, taking no notice of Alice until she remarks how
much he resembles an egg. Irritated by this remark, Humpty Dumpty insults Alice. She
starts to softly recite the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty, and he asks for her name
and requests that she state her business. Alice tells Humpty Dumpty her name and he tells
her that her name is stupid. In Humpty Dumptys opinion, names should mean something,
offering his own name as an example since it alludes to the shape of his body. He goes on
to remark that with a name like Alice, she could be any shape at all. Concerned for his
safety, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty why he sits atop the wall. He replies that the King
made him a promise, which spurs Alices memory of the rhyme stating that the Kings
horses and the Kings men put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Alices allusion to
the poem angers Humpty Dumpty, who insists that he is well protected and changes the
subject.
Humpty Dumpty seems to make a riddle out of every part of their conversation. Alice
compliments his cravat, which he explains he received from the White King and Queen
for his un-birthday. He explains that an un-birthday is a day that is not his birthday.
Humpty Dumpty declares that un-birthdays are better than birthdays and starts to use
words that make no sense in the context of what he says. Alice questions what he means,
to which he retorts that he can make words do anything that he wants, though he pays
words extra if he requires them to do a lot of work. Alice remembers the poem
Jabberwocky, and she asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words to her. She recites the
first stanza, which he picks apart word by word. Humpty Dumpty then begins his own
poem for her, which abruptly ends with a goodbye. Annoyed, Alice walks off,
complaining about his behavior when a great crash resounds through the wood.
Analysis
Humpty Dumpty reintroduces the idea of naming and the role it plays in shaping identity.
Unlike the Fawn and the Gnat, Humpty Dumpty has a nuanced understanding of naming.
However, Humpty Dumpty maintains an understanding of language that reverses Alices
understanding of the way language works. Alice believes that proper names do not have
profound significance, while names for universal concepts such as a glory or

impenetrability have fixed meanings that all people understand. Humpty Dumpty
believes the opposite, stating that he finds the name Alice to be stupid since it fails to
connote anything about who she is. Humpty Dumpty continues this manipulation of
language, taking liberties with the meanings of known words and establishing definitions
for them that suit his purposes. Words become characters under Humpty Dumptys
employment, an idea he promotes with the claim that he literally pays the words more
when he makes them do a lot of work.
Humpty Dumptys philosophy of naming demonstrates both the arbitrariness of lanugage
and the capacity of literature to convey meaning. Humpty Dumpty redefines the
meanings of words at will, but he must use other words that have presumably stable
meanings to explain the new definitions. If too many words have fluid meanings, their
meanings will change erratically, and language will cease to function as a system capable
of communicating ideas. Humpty Dumptys ideas about language will fall apart if
multiple people adjust the meanings of words to suit their individual fancy. When applied
to literature, Humpty Dumptys ideas are more appropriate. Authors manipulate the
multiple meanings of words they use when writing, giving their language a richness that
has the potential to fascinate and delight readers. Carrolls frequent use of puns and
wordplay shows how attuned he was to this property of language. Even in this section,
Carroll plays with the pun on the richness of language, indicating that Humpty Dumpty
pays words more when they work harder.
Chapter VII: The Lion and the Unicorn
Summary
Alice sees soldiers and horses running through the forest as she walks into the wood. She
comes across the White King, who is jotting notes down in his memorandum book. He
delightedly tells Alice that he has sent out all of his horses and men, with the exception of
two horses needed for the game, and his messengers, Haigha and Hatta, who are in
town on errands. The White King asks Alice if she passed Haigha or Hatta on the road,
but she declares that she has seen nobody. The White King expresses amazement that she
can see Nobody at all, admitting that he has difficulty seeing real people. Confused,
Alice looks around, and finally catches sight of Haigha wriggling toward them. When
Haigha (the March Hare) arrives, the White King asks him for a hand sandwich. After
devouring the sandwich, the White King munches on hay given to him by Haigha and
asks his messenger if he passed anyone on the road. Haigha says he passed nobody,
prompting the White King to declare that Alice saw Nobody too, and that Nobody must
be a slow walker. Haigha asserts that he is sure that nobody walks faster than he does.
The White King disagrees, explaining that Nobody would be with them now if Nobody
did indeed walk faster.
Haigha informs the White King that the Lion and the Unicorn are fighting in town. As
they run to town to watch, Alice repeats a nursery rhyme about the Lion and the Unicorn.
In the rhyme, the Lion and the Unicorn fight for a crown, stop to eat bread and cake, and
are then drummed out of town. When they arrive in town, Alice and her companions
stand with Hatta (the Mad Hatter). Hatta informs them of the events of the fight thus far.
The Lion and the Unicorn stop their fighting for a moment. The White King calls for a
refreshment break, so Hatta and Haigha pass bread around. Alice notices the White
Queen dart through, observing that someone seems to be chasing her. The White King

realizes that Alice has caught sight of the White Queen and points out that she runs so
quickly that following her would be fruitless.
The Unicorn approaches Alice, staring at her in disgust as it asks her what she is. Alice
states that she is a child, but the Unicorn decides that she is a Monster. The Unicorn
strikes up a bargain with Alice that they will believe in each other now that they have
seen each other. The Unicorn calls for cake, which Haigha produces. The Lion joins
them, and orders Alice to cut the cake. Despite her repeated slicing, the cake persists in
coming back together. The Unicorn explains that Alice must pass the cake around first
and cut afterward. Alice begins passing the cake, and it splits into three pieces, leaving
her with nothing to cut. Just then, she hears a deafening drumbeat that scares her and
causes her to run off in terror. She crouches on the other side of a brook, imagining that
the noise also caused the Lion and the Unicorn to flee.
Analysis
Alice again sees the power language has to dictate outcomes, for the events described in
her nursery rhymes come true both for Humpty Dumpty and the Lion and the Unicorn.
The crash that begins the chapter is the fall that Alice described in her nursery rhyme, an
assumption reinforced by the fact that the White King sends (almost) all of his horses and
men, presumably to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Similarly, the battle
between the Lion and the Unicorn unfolds in the same way as the nursery rhyme. The
White Kings literalist tendencies reinforce the idea that language dictates outcomes. He
mistakes Alice and Haighas unspecific nobody for a real person named Nobody. The
White King portrays Nobody as a character who takes words at their face value, which
reaffirms the inversion motif. For the White King, things and events are not explained
through words, but words themselves become literal things and events.
Chapter VIII: Its My Own Invention
Summary
As the pounding of the drums dies away, Alice starts to wonder if she still exists as part
of the Red Kings dream. At this moment, the Red Knight barrels toward her, screaming
Check! The White Knight comes to Alices rescue, and the two chess pieces fight
furiously until the Red Knight gallops off. The White Knight happily tells Alice that he
will bring her safely to the next brook, explaining that once she crosses the brook she will
become a queen. As they walk, the White Knight describes all of the items that he carries
with him. He carries a box to keep clothes and food, a beehive for keeping bees, a
mousetrap to protect his horse from mice, and horse-anklets to guard against shark-bites.
As he speaks to Alice, he repeatedly falls off of his horse. She questions his riding ability,
which offends him. The White Knight explains that he has practiced riding frequently,
which is the key to good horsemanship. Alice finds his claims to be ridiculous.
As the White Knight and Alice continue traveling toward the brook, he explains several
of his inventions to Alice. He has developed a new kind of helmet, several ways to jump
a fence, and a new kind of pudding, which he considers to be his greatest invention. All
of the White Knights inventions seem to have something wrong with them. Alice
becomes increasingly puzzled by his explanations as they approach the forests border.
The White Knight mistakes Alices confusion for sadness, and proposes that he sing a
song that has several different names. Upon finishing the song, the White Knight points

to the brook that she must jump over to become a queen. He asks her to wait to jump until
he reaches a turn far off down the road. Alice waits for him to pass out of sight, waving
her handkerchief after him, and jumps over the brook. On the other side, she finds herself
sitting on a lawn wearing a crown.
Analysis
With the exception of the White Knight, the characters of Looking-Glass World have no
understanding of the rules of the chess game that organize their lives. Alice has finally
reached the seventh square and will become a queen with her next move. Since she
moves as a pawn, she has no sense of the squares around her. She learns of her impending
transformation into a queen from the White Knight, who comes to rescue her from the
Red Knight. With the help of the chessboard diagram provided by Carroll, it becomes
obvious that Alice faced no danger from the Red Knight, who had recently moved to the
square adjacent to Alice. The Red Knights cry of Check! is not intended for Alice,
whom, based on the rules of chess, he cannot capture, but for the White King, whom the
Red Knight has put in check. The Red Knight has no understanding of the game, and
upon seeing Alice, believes that he is meant to capture her. The White Knight arrives and
enters the Red Knights square, defeating the Red Knight. The White Knight guides Alice
to the eighth square, but before leaving she must see him off in his next move. Carroll
follows the rules of chess closely, requiring Alice to watch the White Knight as the turns
the bend in the road, following the one-across, two-over movement of the Knight in
chess.
The White Knight appears as a fictional manifestation of Lewis Carroll. Critics have
pointed out similarities between the two, noting the physical resemblance between them.
Both the White Knight and Carroll have shaggy hair, mild blue eyes, and kindly smiles.
Like Carroll, the Knight invents curious contraptions to help provide for any contingency.
While the White Knight readies himself for a shark attack, Carroll created devices such as
an object to allow him to take notes in the dark. More importantly, Alice finds in the
White Knight and individual who truly esteems and cares for her. He soothes her
loneliness, but this does not stop her from leaving him to become a queen. This decision
imitates how Alice Liddell grew apart from Carroll as she matured. The song that the
White Knight sings to Alice serves as Carrolls heartfelt, if misdirected, tribute to the real
life Alice. Carroll implies that Alice does not feel sadness, only confusion. Alices
dismissal of the White King in her final remark about him affirms that she has grown up:
I hope it encouraged him, she said, as she turned to run down the hill. Alice dismisses
the White Knights offer of love and friendship as she goes off to become a queen, just as
Alice abandoned Carroll when she became a young woman.
Chapters IXXII: Queen Alice; Shaking; Waking; Which Dreamed I?
Summary
After realizing that she has become a Queen, Alice finds herself in the company of the
Red Queen and the White Queen. The two queens begin questioning her relentlessly,
telling her that she cannot be a queen until she passes the proper examination. They ask
her strange questions about manners, mathematics, the alphabet, how to make bread,
languages, and the cause of lightning. The Red Queen frustrates Alice by correcting every
incorrect answer. Alice mistakenly remarks that thunder causes lightning, but when she

attempts to reverse her statement, the Red Queen snaps that once she says something, she
must live with the consequences. The White Queen changes the subject to a thunderstorm
that occurred on the last set of Tuesdays. Confused, Alice listens to a sneering
explanation that in Looking-Glass World, days are taken two or three at a time. The
White Queen continues her foolish story, while the Red Queen apologizes to Alice for the
White Queens behavior, explaining to Alice that the White Queen wasnt brought up
well.
The Red Queen asks Alice to sing a lullaby to the White Queen, but Alice claims that she
doesnt know any. The Red Queen begins singing instead, causing the White Queen to
fall asleep on Alices shoulder. Soon, the Red Queen falls asleep, too, and both queens
slump their heads into Alices lap. The snoring sounds like a song to Alice. She becomes
distracted by the music and doesnt notice when the two queens vanish inexplicably.
When Alice looks up, she finds herself standing in front of a door emblazoned with the
words QUEEN ALICE. Alice wants to enter but only finds a visitors bell and a
servants bell, and no bell for guests. She knocks on the door and it flies open. The words
NO ADMITTANCE UNTIL THE WEEK AFTER NEXT! boom out of the open door.
Alice continues to knock to no avail, until eventually an old frog approaches from behind
her and asks her what she wants. Alice explains that no one will answer the door. The
confused Frog asks what the door has been asking and whether it would need an answer.
The door flies open again and Alice hears a song about Queen Alices grand party.
Alice finds a large table set before her with fifty guests seated around it. She sits down at
the head of the table between the White Queen and the Red Queen. A servant brings out
food and the Red Queen formally introduces Alice to the food. After the introduction, the
Red Queen sends the food back to the kitchen, commenting that it is impolite to eat
something after one has made acquaintance with it. Alice becomes frustrated and asks to
get the pudding back, which she slices and serves to the guests. As the pudding is passed
around, Alice asks the guests why there are so many poems in Looking-Glass World on
the subject of fish. The White Queen responds by telling a riddle that asks whether
answering the door or uncovering a dish of fish is more difficult. The queens toast Alice,
who rises to give thanks to her guests. As she stands up, the room spontaneously erupts
into chaos. Candles rise to the ceiling, guests become stuck to their plates, the White
Queen tumbles into a soup tureen, and a soup ladle storms around the table. Alice grabs
the tablecloth and tugs it off of the table, sending all of the guests flying to the ground.
Alice turns to the Red Queen, whom she considers responsible for the chaos, and grabs
her. The Red Queen shrinks down to the size of a doll and Alice begins shaking her.
Before Alices eyes, the Red Queen seems to transform into her kitten Kitty. Alice
realizes that she has woken up. She scolds Kitty for waking her up and then grabs the
small Red Queen off of the nearby chess table, trying to get Kitty to admit that she had
transformed into the Red Queen. Alice addresses Snowdrop, stating her suspicion that the
white kitten is the White Queen. Lastly, Alice tries to guess who Dinah might be before
deciding that shes probably Humpty Dumpty. She turns back to Kitty and tells her all
about the fish-themed poetry she heard in her dream.
Analysis
The chess motif becomes highly pronounced in this chapter, and the various movements
of the pieces signify the conclusion of the game. As Alice becomes Queen, the

movements and positions of the individual pieces become clear. Flanked by both queens,
Alice can see the entire chessboard. As she sits at the head of the table in her castle, all of
the guests stretched out before her represent the other chess pieces. The table in this scene
represents the table in Alices house on which the chessboard rests, adjacent to the real
Alice asleep in her chair. The White Queens move to the soup tureen sets up the Red
Kings checkmate, and when Alice slides over to seize the Red Queen, she puts the Red
King in checkmate herself and ends the chess game. Now that the game has ended, Alice
wakes up from her dream and finds herself holding Kitty.
Alice seems unsure of herself at the start of the game, but once she exerts her power as a
queen, she exposes the faade and liberates herself from the confines of the chessboard.
The Red and White Queens relentless questioning represents an attempt to flatten Alice
into submission so that she becomes part of their two-dimensional lives in Looking-Glass
World. Alice resists this flattening, which manifests itself literally when the guests at the
table become stuck to their plates. Alice rises to give thanks and in doing so becomes
three-dimensional, setting off the chaos that allows her to seize the Red Queen and end
the chess match.
Some critics see the moment when Alice wins the chess game to be the moment of her
sexual awakening. In this reading, Alices standing up represents a moment of orgasmic
realization. The rising candle flames imply erection imagery, while the repetition of the
word moment in the scene underscores the fleeting sensory intensity that causes Alice
to tear away the tablecloth and attack the Red Queen. This orgasmic moment leads to the
checkmate of the Red King, so that Alice experiences a sexual awakening. At this point,
Alice has nowhere else to go in her dream, and abruptly wakes up. The fact that Dinah
continues to wash Snowdrop when Alice regains consciousness supports the fact that the
dream has happened in a single moment. This realization also prompts Alice to wonder
whether it was she or the Red King who had had the dream. By leaving off at this
moment, Carroll comments that life is nothing but a dream, a blinking moment in Gods
mind.
Through the Looking-Glass
full title Through the Looking-Glass
author Lewis Carroll
type of work Novella
genre Fairy tale; childrens fiction; satire; allegory
language English
time and place written 18671871, Oxford
date of first publication 1871, though the first copies were dated 1872
publisher Macmillan & Co.
narrator The narrator is anonymous, and does not use many words to describe events in
the story.
point of view The narrator speaks in third person, though occasionally in first and
second person. The narrative follows Alice around, voicing her thoughts and feelings.
tone Straightforward; avuncular
tense Past
setting (time) Victorian era, a decade before publication date
setting (place) England, Looking-glass world

protagonist Alice
major conflict Alice attempts to become a Queen in the massive chess game being
played in the Looking-Glass World.
rising action Alice, as a pawn, moves forward square by square, meeting many
different characters as she advances through the chessboard.
climax Alice becomes a queen.
falling action Alice seizes the Red Queen, puts the Red King in checkmate, and, having
ended the game, wakes up wondering about her dream.
themes Chess as a metaphor for a deterministic conception of life; Language as a means
to order the world; The inescapable loneliness a child feels growing up
motifs Dream; Inversion; Chess; Train imagery
symbols Rushes; The sleeping Red King
foreshadowing Alices recitation of the rhymes about Tweedledum and Tweedleedee,
Humpty Dumpty, and the Lion and the Unicorn foreshadow each of their fates within the
story.
Important Quotations Explained
1. Who in the world am I? Ah, thats the great puzzle.
Explanation for Quotation #1
Alice asks this question of herself in Chapter II of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, just
after she has grown to a giant size and frightened the White Rabbit away. Alice realizes
that she is not just trying to figure out Wonderland, but also attempting to determine who
she is and what constitutes her identity in a world that actively challenges her perspective
and sense of self. Wonderland has already begun to affect Alice, and she rightly
understands that her self perception cannot remain fixed in a world that has drastically
different rules from her own. In Wonderland, Alice has a slippery grasp of her identity.
Since Wonderland is a byproduct of her own imagination, it becomes clear that it is
Alices identity and not Wonderland itself that is being called into question. The
nonsensical features and characters that make up Wonderland extend from Alices own
psyche, so her quest to understand Wonderland becomes a quest to understand the forces
and feelings that comprise her identity. The idea of the great puzzle also supports
Carrolls notion that life is an unduly complicated mystery that human beings must use
rational thought and intelligence to understand.
2. Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the
after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her
riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather
about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a
strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she
would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys,
remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.
Explanation for Quotation #2
This quote is the very final sentence of Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Alice has gone
inside for tea, leaving her sister by the riverbank to muse over Alices wondrous dream.

This passage has a tone of long winded, golden nostalgia and differs dramatically from
the rest of the story, which is generally economical in words and nightmarish for Alice.
This tonal shift results from the shift in perspective from Alice to her sister, which in turn
alters the readers perception of Alices adventures. While she experiences her
adventures, Alice finds her journey to be confounding and nightmarish. On the other
hand, Alices sister sees her story as a strange tale from a simple heart. She trivializes
Alices identity shattering journey, distancing the trauma Alice experienced in her dream
with her own aboveground faith in an orderly universe. In a story studded with
subversion, Alices sister becomes the ultimate subversion who undermines Alices
search for meaning and identity as she imagines Alice growing up and mystifying other
simple-hearted children with her stories.
This quote also serves as Carrolls commentary on the character of Alice, the fictionalized
version of his muse Alice Liddell. Carroll became deeply preoccupied with the
dissolution of his friendship with Liddell as she reached maturity and grew apart from
him. This final line has a nostalgic, wistful longing for the happy summer days in
which he would visit with the Liddell sisters and delight them with many a strange tale.
Ultimately, Carroll realizes that these happy summer days cannot last, and like Alices
dream or even Alices sisters dream, the simple hearted love of a child will fade, leaving
him only with memories of child-life.

3. Its a great huge game of chess thats being playedall over the worldif this is
the world at all, you know.
Explanation for Quotation #3
This quote occurs in Chapter II of Through the Looking-Glass, as Alice looks out from
the hill and sees a landscape checkered like a chessboard and different characters
stationed on the board like chessmen. Carroll has already introduced the theme of chess,
but Alices musing suggest that chess functions as a metaphor not only for the world of
the novel but for our world as well. Carroll frequently espoused the idea of life as a game.
Like Alice, we are pawns in our own lives, condemned to move forward through time
with little knowledge and understanding of the wider world. Within our limited
perspective, the world seems eminently ordered and explainable by nature and logic,
much like a chessboards symmetrical and geometrical nature evokes a sense of
determinable order.
4. Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The
Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years
afterward she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been yesterday
the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knightthe setting sun gleaming through
his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled herthe
horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the
grass at her feetand the black shadows of the forest behindall this she took in
like a picture, as, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half-dream, to the
melancholy music of the song.
Explanation for Quotation #4

This sentence appears in Chapter VIII of Through the Looking-Glass. Not only is it the
longest sentence in either book, but it is also the most photographically vivid image in
either book and brings to mind Carrolls hobby as a photographer. The image is poignant
given the White Knights role in the story. The White Knight is an aberration among the
characters, since he is the only character who treats Alice with true kindness and
compassion. He does not seem to be part of Alices dream at all, since the characters in
her dream behave disagreeably and induce profound feelings of loneliness and isolation
in Alice. The White Knight seems more real than the absurd personages she has met
before, which is one reason why Alice remembers his image so clearly after many years
have passed. The photographic quality of the passage indicates that Carroll has inserted
himself and his desires into the text, since Carroll created the White Knight as his literary
counterpart. Carroll crosses into the pages of the book to burn his image into Alices mind
as the most authentic and memorable character, an effect he wished to have on the mind
of the real-life Alice Liddell.
5. Life, what is it but a dream?
Explanation for Quotation #5
This question ends the poem that concludes Through the Looking-Glass, reminding us
that one can never be sure that life is more than a dream, since it is made of fleeting
memories, arbitrary machinations, and essentially meaningless conclusions. Alices
adventure in Through the Looking-Glass is a dream, even though it dramatizes her
journey to young womanhood. Even as she wakes, Alice finds that the order of her room
seems just as arbitrary and tenuous as the dream world from which she has emerged.
Additionally, this quote brings to mind the Red Kings dream and the implications that
human life exists as dream in the mind of a greater divine being. With this final question,
Carroll suggests that we do not in fact exist as we imagine, and ultimately are no more
than the shadowy dreams of a greater consciousness.