Growth in Alice in Wonderland Essay

When Alice first came to Wonderland she was very foolish and put herself in danger many times. As the book progresses, we see Alice becoming more mature. When Alice needed to shrink to fit in the door, she saw the bottle that said, "Drink me". Alice looked to check that it wasn't poison. When Alice was shrinking, she forgot to bring the key with her. If Alice remembered to bring the key with her, she would have been able to go into the garden in chapter 2.

In Chapters 2-4 Alice is still immature and nearly kills her self many times. When Alice picked up the gloves, she puts them on and doesn't realize that she is shrinking until she nearly drowns in her own tears. After she meets the mouse in the pool of tears she is raving about how good Dinah is at killing small rodents. Alice is being very impolite to the mouse, and proves she still has a lot more to learn.

Then Alice and the mouse swim to shore, and meet up with many birds and decide to have a Caucus race to dry themselves. Even though there aren't any rules in this race, it doesn't seem to bother Alice, and she plays along. In the next chapter Alice puts her life in danger many times. When Alice goes off to retrieve the gloves, she drinks the potion and she barely fits in the house. The White Rabbit and Bill try to get in the house many ways, but Alice shows that she is getting smarter. Then, as a last resort, they threaten to burn the house down but instead they throw rocks at Alice. The rocks turn into small cakes and make Alice smaller, allowing her to escape the house.

The turning point where Alice starts to act like a young adult is when she escapes the house. When Alice meets the Hookah Smoking Caterpillar, Alice treats the Caterpillar with respect and it pays off. The Caterpillar tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her smaller, and the other half will make her bigger. Even though this makes no sense, Alice does her best and takes a piece of each side and holds it in each hand. Alice first takes the right side and Alice almost disappears. She quickly eats the left side and this saves her life. Then she goes to the Duchess' house and Alice's maternal instincts kick in. After the Duchess throws the baby at Alice, Alice was about to take care of it. That is, until it turned into a pig! Alice then lets the pig run into the woods. After that Alice goes to the Mad Tea Party. As a result of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare acting so rudely, Alice constantly interrupts the March Hare's ridiculous story. After leaving the Tea Party, she realizes that this place is so mad that she walks through a door in a tree. The door brings her back to the hall of doors and then she enters the garden.

Alice is slowly realizing that Wonderland is fake and it shows when Alice stands up to the Queen of Hearts. After the King of Hearts calms down, the Queen of Hearts invites Alice to play Croquet. In Wonderland's version of croquet, the only rule is to use a flamingo as a mallet to hit the hedgehog in the hole. In this Croquet game there are no rules, much like the Caucus race. The difference now is that Alice is more mature, and she wants to have some order in this game. After the Queen concludes the game, Alice is sent off to speak with the Mock Turtle.

The Mock Turtle speaks about what he used to do in school such as reeling and writing and after everyday the number of days would lessen. Alice understands what the mock turtle is saying, and asks what happens after zero. Since this book was written in the 1800's, they didn't understand negative numbers. The Mock Turtle quickly changes the subject to the Lobster Quadrille game. In the middle of the Lobster Quadrille game, the trial is about to begin and Alice leaves.

Alice finds out that the rabbit accuses the knave of hearts that he stole the Queen of Heart's tarts. The first witness is the Mad Hatter, and he does not help the case whatsoever. This is when Alice starts to grow in size knowing that this case is a bunch of nonsense. The second witness is the cook who says that the tarts are made out of pepper, but then he escapes in the confusion of the court. The next witness is Alice. By this time Alice is huge and knocks down the jury box. The King then states Alice can't talk because she is more than a mile high according to rule 42. Alice then accused him of making up that rule. The King says it is the oldest rule in the book. Then Alice says that you are nothing but pack of cards. Alice uses her maturity to stand up to the King of Hearts and she knows that these are just a pack of cards and they can't hurt her.

In the beginning of the book, Alice seemed very young and it didn't look like Alice was going to survive long in Wonderland. But, over the course of the book, Alice slowly matured into a young lady and was able to survive in Wonderland.