Study notes: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice follows a rabbit with a watch and falls down a tunnel into a place where rules keep changing. She grows and shrinks, insults a mouse by talking about cats, and sits at a tea party that never ends. A queen shouts for heads to come off, but the people around her treat the shouting like weather. At the trial of the Knave of Hearts, Alice finally says the whole room is only a pack of cards. Carroll wrote the book from stories he told a real child, and the jokes are about logic as much as about rabbits.
Themes
Curiosity is useful even when adults talk nonsense. Size and rules feel different when you are small. Manners can hide bullying.
People to follow
Alice. The White Rabbit. The Cheshire Cat. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. The Queen of Hearts.
Talk about
- When is Alice being rude, and when is the world being rude to her?
- Which rule in Wonderland is almost a real rule from school?
- Why does the dream ending matter?
Public-domain text.