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Alice in Wonderland Chapter 1

In Chapter 1 of 'Alice in Wonderland', Alice, bored by her sister's reading, follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and falls into a dream-like world. She encounters a series of locked doors and drinks from a bottle that shrinks her, but finds herself unable to access a garden she desires. The chapter explores themes of curiosity, the frustrations of growing up, and the surreal nature of dreams.

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51 views

Alice in Wonderland Chapter 1

In Chapter 1 of 'Alice in Wonderland', Alice, bored by her sister's reading, follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and falls into a dream-like world. She encounters a series of locked doors and drinks from a bottle that shrinks her, but finds herself unable to access a garden she desires. The chapter explores themes of curiosity, the frustrations of growing up, and the surreal nature of dreams.

Uploaded by

varana777
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Alice in Wonderland Chapter 1

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Summary
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.

Read more about dreams as a motif.

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.

Read more about the words "curious," "nonsense," and "confusing" as


motifs.

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.

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