Reading Notes: Through the Looking-Glass, Part B


Again, Lewis Carroll does a great job of subverting expectations and giving us a great reason to keep reading his works! The situations that Alice finds herself in keep on getting stranger and stranger, with the story eventually culminating in her becoming a queen in Wonderland! Who could have seen that coming? The characters that she surrounds herself with are again unique and entertaining. My personal favorite is the Red Queen, with her evil-like, no-nonsense attitude. This is characterized extremely well through quotes such as, “Speak when you’re spoken to!” and “You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination”. This shows that she relies on what being a queen is all about, that she won’t let anyone take a queen spot who isn’t worthy, especially not someone as young and as normal as Alice. The Red Queen further humiliates Alice, making her seem less in their eyes, by asking her odd type of math problems. This is a recurring theme throughout Alice’s adventures. Characters she meets ask her extremely odd questions that she could have no hope of answering. When she doesn’t answer, the characters assume she is either dumb, doesn’t belong, or has no idea what she is doing. This is an interesting theme to explore within stories, it’s almost as if gaslighting goes into place wherever Alice goes. It’s a surprise that she hasn’t succumbed to all of these terrible questions, giving us an insight into Alice’s thought. She’s resilient and won’t let others treat her like garbage. The questions that she is asked keep on getting weirder and weirder. Take, for example, the riddle, “How is bread made?”. When Alice answers with the proper answer of “flour”, the queen is taken aback and says, “Where do you pick the flower? In a garden, or in the hedges?”. It’s quotes like these that change up how characters are perceived by the reader and by Alice.

The Queens
By John Tenniel

"Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" by Lewis Carroll (1871)

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