Alice in Wonderland book summary, Sintesi del corso di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Alice in Wonderland book summary e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 📖 Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole Alice sits drowsily by a riverbank, bored by the book her older sister reads to her. Out of nowhere, a White Rabbit runs past her, fretting that he will be late. The Rabbit pulls a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and runs across the field and down a hole. Alice impulsively follows the Rabbit and tumbles down the deep hole that resembles a well, falling slowly for a long time. As she floats down, she notices that the sides of the well are covered with cupboards and shelves. She plucks a marmalade jar from one of the shelves. The jar is empty, so Alice sets it down on another shelf. With nothing else to do, she speaks aloud to herself, wondering how far she has fallen and if she might fall right through to the other side of the earth. She continues to speak aloud, daydreaming about her cat Dinah. In the midst of imagining a conversation the two of them might have, she abruptly lands. Unhurt, Alice gets up and catches sight of the White Rabbit as he vanishes around a corner. Alice approaches a long corridor lined by doors. The doors are all locked, so Alice tests them with a key that she finds on a glass table. After searching around, Alice discovers a small door behind a curtain. She tests the key again and finds that it opens up to a passage and a garden. Since the door is much too small for Alice to squeeze through, she ventures back to the table with the hope that she might find something there that would help her. A bottle marked “DRINK ME” sits on the table. Alice drinks the contents of the bottle after inspecting it to be sure it does not contain poison. Alice immediately shrinks, and though she can now fit through the door, she realizes she has left the key on the tabletop high above her. She alternately cries and scolds herself for crying before catching sight of a small cake with the words “EAT ME” underneath the table. Alice eats the cake with the hope that it will change her size, but becomes disappointed when nothing happens. Analysis Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begins with Alice dozing off as her sister reads to her, anticipating the strange and nonsensical events that occur throughout the book. As her sister reads, Alice nods off into a dream-like state in which she seems to catch sight of a fully dressed white rabbit capable of speaking English. Even before she enters Wonderland, she experiences phenomena that depart from the conventional rules of the real world. The plunge into the rabbit hole represents a plunge into deep sleep. Her dreams create a fully formed world that constantly shifts and transforms with its own unique logic. The slow fall imitates the shift from dozing off to deep sleep, beginning with Alice’s idle daydreaming and ending with her firmly placed in her dream world. Alice slowly acclimates to the dream world but does not let go of the established logic of the waking world. She marvels that after this fall, she would think nothing of falling off of the top of her house, much less down the stairs, even though the narrator reminds us that both falls would still likely kill her. Alice runs away from the Victorian world of her sister because she feels unfulfilled, but she quickly discovers that Wonderland will not fulfill any of her desires. Wonderland thwarts her expectations at every turn. The Rabbit represents this motif of frustrated desire. His antics inspire Alice to follow him down the hole and into Wonderland, but he constantly stays one step ahead of her. Led on by curiosity, Alice follows the elusive rabbit even though she does not know what she will do once she catches him. She pursues him out of pure curiosity but believes that catching him will give her some new knowledge or satisfaction. Even when the outcome is unknown, the act of chasing implies that a desired goal exists. Alice cannot enter the garden even though she wants to, and her desire to enter the garden represents the feelings of nostalgia that accompany growing up. Carroll dramatizes the frustrations that occur with growing older as Alice finds herself either too small or too large to fit through the passageway into the garden. After drinking the potion, Alice shrinks and cannot reach the key on the table. The helplessness that comes with her exaggeratedly small size represents the feelings of insignificance of childhood. The growth spurt caused by the cake in Chapter 2 represents the awkward bodily transformations that come with puberty. Alice’s growth allows her the means to fulfill her destiny but literally reminds her that she is growing away from the pleasures of childhood. The idealized garden is now off limits to Alice, who can no more fit through the passageway than an infant could travel back to the safety and security of the womb. Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears After finishing the cake that says “EAT ME,” Alice grows to nine feet tall and finds that she can barely get an eye down to the doorway. She begins to cry, which causes all of the animals to scatter in fear. Alone again, Alice begins to cry until she hears the distant pattering of footsteps. Analysis The Caucus race provides a thinly veiled critique of the absurdity of English politics at the turn of the century while making a larger comment about the general meaninglessness of life. The animals run randomly in circles, progress nowhere, and arbitrarily adjourn without any clear conclusion. Carroll implies that politicians do the same, behaving with a great deal of pomp and circumstance without actually accomplishing anything. On a broader scale, the caucus race seems to imply that there may not be a clear purpose and meaning to life itself. Though the race accomplishes the intended purpose of getting everyone dry, they do not follow a clear path or understand what they are doing as they do it. This may be a broader commentary on the fact that life takes unexpected and sometimes arbitrary twists and turns but ultimately ends up in the right place even though there may not be a clear purpose. There is a great deal of confusion about words and their meanings in this chapter, showing the ways that Wonderland distorts language. When Alice mistakes the Mouse’s “tale” for its “tail,” visualizing the former in the shape of the latter, her inability to understand the inhabitants of Wonderland emerges. The purpose of language is to convey meaning, which requires words to have fixed definitions in order to consistently convey meaning. In Wonderland, language, as well as characters, events, and terrains, change meaning and significance from moment to moment. Each aspect of Wonderland has no lasting impact outside of the scene and the context in which it operates. As a result, there are no consistent patterns of meaning that would create a system of logic in Wonderland that might allow a visitor such as Alice to make sense of her surroundings. Alice’s verbal miscues with the Mouse are one example of her inability to understand patterns of behavior and thus establish any kind of expectation of what to anticipate in Wonderland. Chapter 4: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill The White Rabbit approaches Alice, looking for his gloves and fan. Alice searches dutifully but cannot find them. The White Rabbit mistakes Alice for his housemaid, Mary Ann, and commands her to go to his house and fetch his things. Startled by the Rabbit’s demands, Alice obeys and soon finds his house. As she walks, she thinks about how strange it is to take orders from animals and imagines that her cat Dinah might start ordering her around when she gets back home. Inside of the house, she finds the gloves and fan, as well as a little bottle labeled “DRINK ME.” Curious to find out what the contents of the bottle will do, Alice drinks the liquid. Before she can finish, she begins growing rapidly and can barely fit in the room. Her arm dangles from a window and her foot becomes wedged in the chimney.Alice decides that her adventures are like a fairy tale and imagines writing her own stories once she grows up. Given her new size, she reasons that perhaps she has in fact grown up and will never age. The White Rabbit interrupts her train of thought by calling for his fan and gloves. He tries to storm into the house, but Alice’s giant arm prevents the door from opening. The Rabbit tries to climb through the window, but Alice bats him away with her giant hand. The Rabbit calls out for his servant, Pat, and the two begin to plot a way to deal with Alice when she swats them away again. The Rabbit and Pat recruit another servant, a lizard named Bill, to climb down the chimney, but Alice launches him into the air with her foot. A crowd gathered outside calls to burn down the house. Alice threatens to send Dinah to get them and they begin hurling pebbles through the window at her face. The pebbles transform into cakes, and reasoning that the cakes might cause her to become smaller, Alice eats one and shrinks. She leaves the house and encounters a mob of animals ready to rush her. Alice flees and heads into a wood where she thinks about how she might return to her normal size and find the garden. A sharp bark causes her to look up at an enormous puppy standing over her. Afraid it might be hungry, Alice tires it out by teasing it with a stick. She then sets off, wondering what she might eat or drink to return to her original height. She comes across a giant mushroom and climbs to the top, discovering a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah with an air of indifference. Analysis The White Rabbit’s status as an authority figure forces Alice to adjust her perception that humans sit at the top of the animal hierarchy. Alice wonders if her experiences in Wonderland will affect the way she conducts herself when she gets back home, since she imagines that she will have to start taking orders from her cat Dinah. Alice accepts the inversion of the natural order with the same faith that she might accept new information in her normal day-to-day life. Wonderland breaks down Alice’s beliefs about her identity and replaces those learned beliefs and understandings of the world with Wonderland’s nonsensical rules. Alice understands this identity displacement in terms of a fairy tale. She states, “When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!” Fiction has intruded on her own sense of reality, and she finds herself unable to keep the two separate. Alice is no longer the Alice she knew at home and is not altogether sure of who she is anymore. Alice continues to have problems with her size, which exacerbates her confusion over her identity and once again alludes to the painful transition from childhood to adulthood. In Chapter 1, her changing size became a source of anxiety for Alice, revealing her desire to remain a child and avoid the pressures of adulthood. In this chapter, she identifies as a growing girl too large to be shut in by forces that seek to constrict and repress her. The focus on physical space in Chapter 4 emphasizes a child’s emerging feelings of claustrophobia as he or she grows and changes. The house represents domestic repression, an idea underscored by the fact that Alice enters it as a servant girl. When Alice literally outgrows the house, her body manifests her desire to transcend the boundaries of her confined existence. When Alice meets the puppy, she finally discovers a Wonderland creature that behaves in a way that she expects. Unlike the other creatures Alice encounters in Wonderland, the puppy behaves the way a puppy would in the real world. Alice isn’t the only one who recognizes this aberration in the logic of Wonderland. In a later chapter, the Cheshire Cat tries to prove to Alice that it is “mad” by comparing itself to a dog, which it views as being quite normal. The fact that the dog is the only thing in Wonderland that resembles Alice’s reality at home may be a function of the fact that Carroll hated dogs. Carroll reveals his disdain for canines by giving the dog none of the magical qualities of the other animals in Wonderland. Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar Alice comes across a Caterpillar that is resting on top of a giant mushroom and smoking a hookah pipe. The two stare at each other in silence for a while before the Caterpillar asks Alice, “Who are you?” Alice has trouble explaining who she is to the antagonistic and contemptuous Caterpillar. Dejected, she turns to leave, but the Caterpillar calls her back to recite a poem. The Caterpillar duly notes that she recites the poem incorrectly and goes on to ask what size she would like to be. Alice states that being three inches tall is a wretched height, which insults the three-inch-tall Caterpillar. The Caterpillar crawls away in a huff, but not before telling Alice that eating one side of the mushroom will make her grow larger and eating the other side will make her grow smaller. Alice tastes the right-hand portion of the mushroom and shrinks. She next tries part of the left-hand portion of the mushroom, and her neck grows so long that her head is above the treetops. Realizing she cannot get the other Analysis Chapter 6 derives humor from the fact that the inhabitants of Wonderland consider their environment and actions to be completely normal. The Frog Footman reacts to the near miss of the flying plate with complete nonchalance, talking on as if nothing had happened. The Frog Footman seems to expect nothing less than total chaos. Alice attempts to fit the Frog Footman’s behavior into a logical structure, failing to understand that Wonderland’s order is defined by chaos. She does not realize how close she comes to the truth with the exclamation that the Frog Footman’s belligerence is “enough to drive one crazy!” As the Cheshire Cat later explains, Alice must be “mad” herself in order to understand the nature of things in Wonderland. Even though there seems to be a rigid social structure in Wonderland, the Frog Footman and the Duchess reject normal social conventions and behave arbitrarily. The presence of a Duchess with a Footman suggests a rigid social order, complete with codes of conduct. This hierarchy reminds Alice of her own society, but their behavior destroys any traditional notion of social convention. The Frog Footman is idiotic and argumentative, and the Duchess exhibits vile and violent behavior. Traditional social codes are ignored, as the Frog Footman has no comprehension of time and thinks nothing of plates flying at his face. The Duchess treats her baby rudely and aggressively, and would likely scoff at the ways that Victorian women care for their babies. The Duchess’s rhyme emphasizes the rejection of social convention, drawing upon a Victorian poem by David Bates that recommends gentle treatment of babies, a message that the Duchess completely ignores. Alice begins to accept the rejection of tradition and social order when she discovers that the baby is in fact a pig, considering that other children she knows from home might also “do very well as pigs . . . if only one knew the right way to change them.” Despite the pun on “change” (to change a baby’s diaper, to literally change a baby into a pig), Alice begins to accept the bizarre social behaviors of Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat explains to Alice that madness is the chief characteristic of the residents of Wonderland, and that to be in Wonderland is to be mad. In order to exist at all in Wonderland, one must accept its inherent irrationality. The Cheshire Cat reasons that in order to accept this irrationality at all, one must be mad. Alice’s unflagging curiosity makes her mad in the Cheshire Cat’s eyes, since it characterizes her unique and illogical approach to Wonderland’s natives. The Cheshire Cat’s use of the word “mad” puns on the word “made,” since everything in Wonderland is fabricated. Alice’s willingness to venture into her own dream means that she herself is similarly fabricated. The Cheshire Cat understands that Wonderland and all of its inhabitants exists as a figment of Alice’s dreaming imagination. Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party Alice approaches a large table set under the tree outside the March Hare’s house and comes across the Mad Hatter and the March Hare taking tea. They rest their elbows on a sleeping Dormouse who sits between them. They tell Alice that there is no room for her at the table, but Alice sits anyway. The March Hare offers Alice wine, but there is none. Alice tells the March Hare that his conduct is uncivil, to which he rejoins that it was uncivil of her to sit down without being invited. The Mad Hatter enters the conversation, opining that Alice’s hair “wants cutting.” Alice admonishes his rudeness, but he ignores her scolding and responds with a riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Alice attempts to answer the riddle, which begins a big argument about semantics. After their argument, the tea party sits in silence until the Mad Hatter asks the March Hare the time. When he discovers that the March Hare’s watch, which measures the day of the month, is broken, the Mad Hatter becomes angry. He blames the March Hare for getting crumbs on the watch when the March Hare was spreading butter on it. The March Hare sullenly dips the watch in his tea, dejectedly remarking that “It was the best butter.” Alice gives up on the riddle and becomes angry with the Mad Hatter when she discovers that he doesn’t know the answer either. She tells him he should not waste time asking riddles that have no answers. The Mad Hatter calmly explains that Time is a “him,” not an “it.” He goes on to recount how Time has been upset ever since the Queen of Hearts said the Mad Hatter was “murdering time” while he performed a song badly. Since then, Time has stayed fixed at six o’clock, which means that they exist in perpetual tea-time. Bored with this line of conversation, the March Hare states that he would like to hear a story, so they wake up the Dormouse. The Dormouse tells a story about three sisters who live in a treacle-well, eating and drawing treacle. Confused by the story, Alice interjects with so many questions that the Dormouse becomes insulted. Alice continues to ask questions until the Mad Hatter insults her and she storms off in disgust. As she walks, she looks back at the Mad Hatter and the March Hare as they attempt to stuff the Dormouse into a teapot. In the wood, Alice encounters a tree with a door in it. She enters the door and finds herself back in the great hall. Alice goes back to the table with the key and uses the mushroom to grow to a size that she can reach the key, then to shrink back to the size that she can fit through the door. She goes through the door and at last arrives at the passageway to the garden. Analysis When Alice discovers that Time is a person and not merely an abstract concept, she realizes that not only are social conventions inverted, but the very ordering principles of the universe are turned upside down. Not even time is reliable, as Alice learns that Time is not an abstract “it” but a specific “him.” An unruly, subjective personality replaces the indifferent mechanical precision associated with the concept of time. Time can punish those who have offended it, and Time has in fact punished the Mad Hatter by stopping still at six o’clock, trapping the Mad Hatter and March Hare in a perpetual teatime. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse must carry out an endless string of pointless conversations, which may reflect a child’s perception of what an actual English teatime was really like. Alice must adjust her own perceptions of time, since the Mad Hatter’s watch indicates that days are rushing by. However, the party has not moved past the month of March, the month during which the March Hare goes mad.Though the tea party challenges Alice’s understanding of the fundamental concept of time, the Mad Hatter’s answerless riddle reaffirms Wonderland’s unusual sense of order. The riddle seems to have no answer and exists solely to perpetuate confusion and disorder. Some readers have suggested that the riddle does in fact have an answer: Edgar Allen Poe “wrote on” both the subject of a Raven and “wrote on” a physical writing desk. In Wonderland, chaos is the ruling principle, but a strange sense of order still exists. Though riddles need not have answers, language must retain some kind of logic. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse point out to Alice that saying what she means and meaning what she says are not the same thing. Alice has said that she cannot take “more” tea because she has not had any yet. However, as the Mad Hatter points out, Alice can indeed take “more” tea even though she has not had any, since “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.” The language games at the tea party underscore the inconsistency of Wonderland, but also imply that the ordering principles that govern Alice’s world are just as arbitrary. Chapter 8: The Queen’s Croquet Ground Alice enters the garden and meets three gardeners in the shape of playing cards. The gardeners Two, Five, and Seven bicker with each other as they paint the white roses on the rose trees red. Upon noticing Alice, the gardeners explain that they have planted white rose trees by mistake and must paint them red before the Queen of Hearts finds out. Just then, the Queen arrives, surrounded by a great entourage of living playing cards. The gardeners scramble to their bellies to bow before the Queen, who asks for Alice’s name with great severity. Alice answers the Queen graciously and realizes she no soldiers remaining to act as arches, the Queen concludes the game and decides that Alice should visit the Mock Turtle. While the King pardons the condemned croquet players, the Queen brings Alice to the Gryphon, who leads her to the Mock Turtle. En route, the Gryphon explains to Alice that the Queen never actually executes anyone. Alice meets the Mock Turtle and immediately becomes concerned since he looks so sad. The Gryphon shows no sympathy for the Mock Turtle, explaining to Alice that he only fancies himself as being sad. Amid constant sobbing, the Mock Turtle begins his tale by explaining that he used to be a real turtle. He went to sea school every day, and his master was an old turtle named Tortoise. Alice interrupts, asking why the teacher would go by the name of “Tortoise” if he wasn’t a tortoise. The Mock Turtle chastises her, explaining that he was so named because he “taught us.” He goes on to talk about his education, which he considers to be the finest available. He studied a variety of unusual subjects, including Reeling and Writing, as well as Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Alice inquires about the length of the lessons, and the Mock Turtle says that they became shorter with each passing day. Alice finds this puzzling, but the Mock Turtle explains that they were called lessons because they “lessen.” When Alice asks what happened when there was no time left for lessons, the Gryphon changes the subject to games. Analysis The Duchess tries to find a moral in everything in much the same way that Alice tries to understand her environment in terms of cause and effect. The Duchess remarks that “everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” Her statement resonates with Alice’s understanding that everything she encounters should result in a lesson of some kind. Alice fails to recognize that her preoccupation with rules resembles the Duchess’s preoccupation with morals. Her inability to see this parallel shows that she has not reached a level of self-awareness that will allow her to understand the power that she is capable of wielding over Wonderland. Carroll uses the character of the Duchess to condemn the self-righteous moralizing of Victorian England. The Duchess’s relentless discussion of morals prevents Alice from having private space for her own thoughts. The Duchess seems to be corrupting Alice, and her physical advances have sexual overtones. The romantic overtures are subtle at first, but the proposal of an “experiment” to wrap her arm around Alice’s waist seems ominous and threatening, especially given the Duchess’s morals about love. The Duchess comes across as a sexual predator who makes Alice feel both “uncomfortable” and “worried.” Although one critic writes that this scene suggests Carroll’s own “fear of being seduced by a middle-aged woman,” it is more likely that Carroll meant to denounce adult didacticism and the feelings of intrusion and threat it inspires in children. The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle are the first inhabitants of Wonderland that Alice can comfortably relate to, but she finds she cannot escape the nonsense logic that dominates their behavior. The Gryphon and Mock Turtle speak directly and have peaceable manners. They become the closest thing to friends that Alice has encountered thus far on her travels. The Gryphon chuckles at the Queen and deflates her authority by explaining that she never actually goes through with the executions she orders. Alice finds comfort in the fact that her two new companions are able to step back and critically observe the unusual aspects of Wonderland. Additionally, the Gryphon and Mock Turtle have had lives that at least bear some resemblance to Alice’s. The description of sea school reminds Alice of her own education, even though the subjects studied there are puns on the type of studies Alice might have pursued in school. However, the Gryphon and Mock Turtle inevitably begin speaking nonsense. Alice finds herself at an impasse when they fail to address the question about what happens when the lessons “lessen” to nothing. Though she has found creatures she feels comfortable with, she cannot understand them no matter how hard she tries. Chapter 10: The Lobster Quadrille The Mock Turtle continues to sigh and sob and finally asks Alice if she has ever been introduced to a lobster. Alice almost volunteers that she once tasted one, but checks herself and simply says no. The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon describe the Lobster-Quadrille, a dance where all of the sea animals (except the jellyfish) partner up with the lobsters, advance from the seashore and throw the lobsters out to sea. The Mock Turtle and Gryphon decide to demonstrate the first figure of the Lobster-Quadrille for Alice, even though they don’t have any lobsters. As they dance, the Mock Turtle sings a tune about a whiting and a snail. After they finish the dance, Alice asks about the whiting, holding back her impulse to mention that she has also tasted whiting. The Gryphon explains to Alice that despite her misconception, whiting does not have crumbs and is named a whiting because it shines the sea animals’ shoes. Noting that in the song, the porpoise steps on the whiting’s tail, Alice says that had she been in the whiting’s place she would have left the porpoise out of the dance. The Mock Turtle explains to Alice that it is unwise for a fish to go anywhere without a “porpoise” (punning on purpose). The Gryphon and the Mock Turtle ask Alice to recount her adventures, and Alice relates her travels in Wonderland, getting as far as her encounter with the Caterpillar before they interrupt her. They find it “curious” that Alice botched the words to “Father William,” and they order her to recite the poem “‘Tis the voice of the sluggard.” Alice messes up the words of this poem, too, which greatly befuddles the Mock Turtle, who wants explanations of the nonsensical verse that results. The Gryphon recommends that she stop reciting. He offers to show her the Lobster-Quadrille again or hear a song by the Mock Turtle. Alice requests the song and the Mock Turtle sings “Turtle Soup.” As the Mock Turtle finishes the song, the Gryphon hears the cry “The trial’s beginning!” and whisks Alice away. Analysis Though the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon initially seem to sympathize with Alice, she soon learns that they do not understand her plight at all. When she first begins talking to them, they seem to be the only creatures in Wonderland that show interest in her bizarre adventures. By using words such as “curious,” “nonsense,” “confusing,” and even “dreadful,” they align themselves with Alice’s attitudes about the strange situations and creatures she has encountered. They seem to see things the way that Alice does and sympathize with her frustration at Wonderland’s backward logic. Alice soon discovers that their feelings are inauthentic. The Gryphon is too detached to identify with Alice, while the Mock Turtle is so sentimental that Alice cannot believe that his feelings are genuine. Though the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle are unable to relate to Alice, they break the pattern of antagonism that she has experienced thus far in her interactions with the residents of Wonderland. Up to this point, Alice has met creatures that behave contemptuously toward her. Regardless of whether or not their behavior is genuine or insincere, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon deviate from the rude belligerence that Alice has come to expect from her encounters. They do not argue with each other or with Alice and make the effort to sympathize and connect with Alice. Their behavior breaks a pattern that Alice has become accustomed to, revealing that Wonderland will frustrate every expectation. Chapter 11: Who Stole the Tarts? Alice arrives in the courtroom and finds the King and Queen of Hearts on their thrones, surrounded by a large crowd of animals and the whole deck of cards. The Knave lies chained before them. Alice surveys the room and takes great pleasure in identifying the various features of a court of law that she has read about. Alice notices that all of the jurors are writing down their own names, has grown to her full size and bats away the playing cards as they fly upon her.Alice suddenly wakes up and finds herself back on her sister’s lap at the riverbank. She tells her adventures to her sister who bids her go inside for tea. Alice traipses off, while her sister remains by the riverbank daydreaming. She envisions the characters from Alice’s adventures, but knows that when she opens her eyes the images will dissipate. She imagines that Alice will one day grow older but retain her childlike spirit and recount her adventures to other children. Analysis The chapter title “Alice’s Evidence” refers both to the evidence that Alice gives during the trial, and also the evidence that she discovers that Wonderland is a dream that she can control by waking up. Alice realizes during the trial that it all “doesn’t matter a bit” what the jury records or whether the jury is upside down or right side up. None of the details or orientations in Wonderland have any bearing on a coherent or meaningful outcome. Alice’s growth during the trial mirrors her growing awareness of the fact that Wonderland is an illusion. She starts to grow when the Mad Hatter bites into his teacup, and she reaches full height during the heated exchange with the Queen when she points out that her antagonists are “nothing but a pack of cards!” Alice exposes Wonderland as an illusion and her growth to full size comes with her realization that she has a measure of control over the illusion. Once she understands that Wonderland is a dream, she wakes up and shatters the illusion.Alice fully grasps the nonsensical nature of Wonderland when the King interprets the Knave’s poem. Alice disputes the King’s attempts to attach meaning to the nonsense words of the poem. Her criticisms are ironic, since throughout her travels she has continually attempted to make sense of the various situations and stories she has encountered. Alice finally understands the futility of trying to make meaning out of her adventures of Wonderland since every part of it is completely incomprehensible. This message is meant not only for Alice but for the readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well. Just as the court complies with the King’s harebrained readings of the poem, Carroll sends a message to those who would attempt to assign specific meanings to the events. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland actively resists definitive interpretation, which accounts for the diversity of the criticism written about the novella. The final scene with Alice’s sister establishes narrative symmetry and changes the tone of Alice’s journey from harrowing quest to childhood fantasy. The reintroduction of the calm scene at the riverbank allows the story to close as it began, transforming Wonderland into an isolated episode of fancy. Alice’s sister ends the novella by changing the tone of Alice’s story, discounting the nightmarish qualities and favoring a dreamy nostalgia for “the simple and loving heart of her childhood.” The sister’s interpretation reduces Alice’s experience of trauma and trivializes the journey as little more than a “strange tale” that Alice may eventually recount to her own children.