Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Alice sits on the riverbank with her older sister, who is reading. Alice finds the book boring because it does not contain illustrations or dialogue. She thinks about making a daisy chain and is about to doze off, when she sees a white rabbit hurry past saying “I shall be too late!” (5). She does not think it strange until she realizes the rabbit is wearing a waistcoat and pocket watch. She gets up and runs after it, following it down a long, dark rabbit hole. The tunnel is lined with cupboards, bookshelves, maps, and pictures, as if it were a regular room. Alice fears she may be falling through the earth and will wind up in New Zealand or Australia.

At the bottom of the tunnel, she follows the White Rabbit down a dark passageway and finds herself in a hall surrounded by locked doors. She unlocks a door that leads to a beautiful garden, but the door is too small for her to fit through. On a table she finds a bottle labeled “Drink me.” After deciding it is not poison, Alice drinks it and immediately shrinks to about 10 inches tall. She tries to enter the door to the garden, but realizes she has left the key on the table, which she is too short to reach. She spies a cake on the ground beneath the table. The currants in the cake spell out “Eat me,” which Alice does.

The cake makes Alice grow to a great height. Frustrated that she cannot enter the garden, Alice begins to cry, and a large pool of tears fills the room. She stops crying when she sees the White Rabbit running down the hall. He is dressed up and is carrying a fan and a pair of white kid gloves. Alice picks up the fan and gloves, which he drops as he is hurrying away.

Alice worries that she is losing her identity. She tries to recite her school lessons—multiplication tables and an edifying children’s poem—but the words come out wrong. She wonders if she has become one of her classmates but decides she cannot be because they are too different.

Meanwhile, Alice has begun to shrink. On her way back to the little door she nearly drowns in the pool of tears that she cried when she was taller and must swim to safety. On the way, she meets a mouse and a number of other animals who have fallen into the water. She offends the Mouse by asking it if it likes dogs and cats (it does not), and the Mouse says that it will tell her why when they reach the shore.

Alice and the animals are looking for a way to dry off, and the Mouse proceeds to tell the story of William the Conqueror because it is a “dry” subject (32-33). This does not work, so the Dodo proposes they have a caucus-race, in which all parties run around for half an hour, until they are dry. The Dodo declares they are all winners of the race, and Alice hands around candy from her pocket as the prize.

The Mouse begins to tell its story, in which a dog named Fury proposes they hold a trial and plans to sentence the Mouse to death. The Mouse accuses Alice of not listening. It storms off, believing Alice is talking nonsense. Alice begins to cry again and wishes aloud that her cat Dinah were there because she is good at catching mice. This startles the other animals—several of whom are birds—and they scatter.