Alice in Wonderland
Characters
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.
Discuss the differences between the two books with regard to Alice's thematic role.
In the first book, Alice represents childhood (despite her personal peculiarities and fairly definite social position) and the child's struggle to survive the confusing world of selfish adults. Ultimately, Alice masters the adult method of interaction and enters into the grown up world on equal terms with its other inhabitants. In the second book, Alice again confronts a confusing set of rules and must learn to deal with them, but this time the advancement seems more social in nature than the biological process of growing-up (for one thing, Alice undergoes no physical changes in this book). Alice advances along a set path and undergoes an initiation ritual to reach a high social position; the rules of behavior she is expected to master are those of a particular group within the social order.
Discuss the differences between the structures of the two books and the thematic implications involved
Answer
The dominant image of Wonderland is the pack of cards. The story seems to proceed in a more or less random fashion, reflecting the prominent role of chance in a game of cards. Looking Glass is structured around a chess game. As chess is a game of skill, this seems to imply some controlling influence behind the events of the second book. So thematically, the first book focuses more on the bewildering arbitrariness of the adult world, while the second book emphasizes a sense of destiny and predetermination (consequently creating a somewhat darker tone).
Discuss the implications throughout much of Wonderland of Alice's aim to reach the garden she sees through the little door.
Answer
Alice glimpses the garden through the little door and adores its loveliness; getting there becomes the only real goal she sets for herself in the book. When she finally arrives in the garden, however, she finds its loveliness tainted by the overbearing presence of the queen and the courtiers and the unpleasantness of the croquet game. This could be interpreted as a comment on false or faded ambitions, or perhaps the illusory joys of the child's perspective of adulthood, which inevitably is disillusioning.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Ch 1-2
In the opening poem, the speaker addresses a child (presumably Alice) and tells her to accept his fairy-tale as a remembrance of times long past.
As the book opens, Alice plays with a little black kitten in the drawing-room on a winter afternoon and tells it to pretend to be the Red Queen from her chess set. When the kitten refuses to fold its arms properly, she threatens to put it through the mirror into Looking-Glass House, where she says everything is just like in the drawing room as far as you can see, only backwards. The glass soon changes to a silvery mist, and Alice jumps through. She finds things quite different in the spaces which are invisible from the normal house, and sees the chessmen walking about on the hearth. A white pawn named Lily begins wailing, and the White Queen yells that she must get to her child and begins to hurry over. Alice, whom they cannot see or hear, picks up the queen and places her next to the pawn, much to the queen's surprise. She shocks the White King by lifting him up and dusting him off, and then writing for him with his pencil when he tries to note the event in his memorandum book. Alice looks in a book and reads the Jabberwocky poem by holding it up to the mirror. The poem contains many strange words, and Alice does not understand most of it. She runs off to see the garden, and finds herself floating down the stairs and through the hall.
Alice finds a path in the garden that appears to lead to a hill, but every turn she takes instead leads her back to the house. She finds a bed of talking flowers, which tell her that someone else is in the garden. That other person is the Red Queen, now grown to life size. Alice walks toward her and finds herself back at the house again, so she tries walking away from her and soon reaches her. The Red Queen takes Alice to the top of the hill where Alice sees that the countryside is laid-out like a chess board, with squares of land divided by brooks and hedges. Alice asks to join the game, and the Red Queen says she can take Lily's place as the White Queen's pawn and be a queen when she reaches the eight square. All of a sudden they start running, with the Red Queen holding Alice's hand and yelling "Faster! Faster!" but they remain in the same place. When they stop, the queen explains that, there, one must run just to keep in place, and to get anywhere else one must run at least twice as fast. The queen measures out five yards on the ground and stops as she walks along the line to give Alice instructions on how to proceed. She says goodbye, then disappears when she gets to the end.
Ch 3-4
Alice looks down on the great chessboard and sees elephants making honey like bees in one of the squares. She runs down the hill and jumps the first brook and immediately finds herself in a train filled with an odd assortment of characters who speak and think in chorus. The train jumps over a brook, and suddenly Alice finds herself under a tree in the fourth square with a large Gnat, with whom she had been speaking on the train. The Gnat tells her about some of the odd bugs in the Looking-Glass World and he suggests several jokes for her to make. He acts extremely depressed and finally sighs itself away.
Alice comes to a wood devoid of names (she even forgets the word "wood"). She meets a Fawn who walks alongside her without fear while in the wood, but bounds off in fright once outside the wood (when it recognizes itself as a deer and Alice as a human). Alice continues on through another wood and runs into Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who are standing very still. They scold her for not saying hello properly, and they all begin to dance and sing as they shake hands. Next, Tweedledee recites "The Walrus and the Carpenter." They see the Red King asleep on the ground, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell Alice that all of them (herself included) are merely part of his dream. This upsets Alice, although she doesn't believe it. Tweedledum finds his rattle broken, and they make Alice help them dress up in makeshift armor so they can have a battle (as in an old song). They are scared off when a gigantic crow flies overhead, and Alice sees a shawl blowing in the wind stirred-up by the crow's wings.
Ch 5-6
Alice catches the shawl and returns it to the White Queen, who is dressed in a terribly disorderly fashion. Alice rearranges her hair and clothes and tells her she should have a lady's-maid, and the Queen offers her the job. The White Queen tells Alice that everyone in Looking-Glass World lives backwards and their memories work both ways, and she proceeds to bandage her finger and scream before she pricks it. She also mentions that the King's messenger is in prison for a crime he has not yet committed. Alice begins to cry at the thought of her loneliness, and the Queen distracts her with a discussion on age and the belief in impossible things.
The Queen's shawl blows off again, and Alice follows her across a brook. The Queen turns into a Sheep, and Alice finds herself in a shop. The shelves all appear to be full, but then turn out to be empty whenever Alice looks straight at them. The Sheep asks if she can row and hands her a pair of knitting needles. The needles turn into oars, and Alice finds herself in a little boat on a river. Alice picks some scented rushes, which immediately begin to fade away in the bottom of the boat.
Suddenly they are back in the shop, and Alice decides to buy an egg. The Sheep refuses to put it into her hand and sets it up on a shelf on the far side of the shop. As Alice walks to it, the area around her becomes wooded, and she crosses a brook. The egg gets larger and turns into Humpty Dumpty as Alice approaches. She provokes him by comparing him to an egg, and Humpty Dumpty spitefully informs her that her name doesn't fit her shape. Alice expresses concern for Humpty Dumpty's safety sitting atop the high wall, but he boasts that the King has promised to send all his horses and men to pick him up if he falls. Humpty Dumpty shows off a cravat he received as an un-birthday present from the White King and Queen, and explains his method of making words mean whatever he chooses. Humpty Dumpty explains all the nonsense words in the first stanza of Jabberwocky, and then recounts a poem for Alice. The poem ends abruptly, and he dismisses her. She walks away, and a large crash shakes the forest.
Ch 7-8
The forest suddenly is filled with clumsy soldiers and horses. Alice finds the White King, and soon Haigha, the messenger, arrives. They go off to see the Lion and the Unicorn fighting each other for the crown (which belongs to the White King), and meet the other messenger, Hatta, who is resuming his tea after a stay in prison. They serve up white and brown bread and plum-cake, and then the Lion and the Unicorn are drummed out of town (all in accordance with an old song). Alice also is carried off by the drumming and jumps a brook to get out of the town.
She is taken prisoner by the Red Knight and the White Knight in turn, who decide to fight for custody over her. They both are extremely clumsy, repeatedly falling off their horses. After a somewhat doubtful victory, the White Knight promises to show Alice to the end of the forest, where she can cross into the eighth square and become a queen. He is terribly awkward and keeps an odd assortment of things tied onto his saddle. He tells Alice about his inventions, all of which are pathetically ineffective. Before he leaves her, he sings her a song about meeting a poor old man. She sees him off as he rides away. Then, she enters the eighth square, where she finds a golden crown on her head.
Ch 9-12
The Red Queen and White Queen appear and give Alice an examination with nonsensical questions. After a while, the Queens fall asleep with their heads in Alice's lap. Their snoring turns to music, and Alice finds herself outside a door marked "Queen Alice." After Alice knocks for a while, the door swings open and Alice hears a chorus of voices singing her welcome. The singing stops when she enters, and she sees the guests are all animals, birds, and flowers. She joins the other two queens at the head of the table. The Red Queen introduces Alice to the leg of mutton, which bows politely. She tells Alice it is not proper etiquette to cut anyone to whom you have just been introduced and has the mutton taken away. She also introduces Alice to the plum-pudding (despite Alice's protests) and orders that taken away. Alice orders it brought back and serves a slice to the Red Queen. The pudding scolds her for her impropriety. The White Queen recites a riddle in verse about a fish with a sticky dish-cover. The company toasts Alice's health, and then the room explodes in confusion.
Alice picks up the Red Queen (who has shrunken considerably), and shakes her. The Queen gradually turns into the black kitten, and Alice finds herself back in her drawing room. Alice tries to make the black kitten confess to having turned into the Red Queen, but with no success. She looks down at the white kitten, which is being cleaned by Dinah, and decides she must have been the White Queen (and that the cleaning explains why she was so disheveled in the dream). She thinks perhaps Dinah became Humpty Dumpty but is not sure. Then, she asks the black kitten to settle the question of whether it was her dream or the Red King's, but the kitten only goes on licking its paws.
