Alice's Control Of A Situation example essay topic

Alice in Wonderland How does height or appearance matter in Victorian England's society? What difference does it make whether a person was tall or short, skinny or fat? In the book Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll puts Alice into may situations where her size makes her odd or unimportant to the other characters. He also has Alice's size change repetitively, making Alice unsure about herself and whether she is real or if what happens to her was all a dream. Carroll also uses Alice's size to intimidate the other characters. Throughout the story, Lewis Carroll uses Alice's size to illustrate the control she has in a situation.

Carroll shows the way that size can affect Alice's situation when she's in the White Rabbit's house. Alice drinks out of a bottle that has a tag saying, Drink Me and grows to an extremely large size. When the Rabbit returned home, he tried to remove the giant arm hanging form his window. This forced Alice to knock the Rabbit down, which frightened and confused him greatly. This one instance shows how she can, when very large, have complete control over everyone else involved. Alice can keep the other characters under her control for her own gain or safety.

After a situation like the one with the Rabbit, Carroll added one where Alice isn t any larger than a mouse. A gigantic puppy confronts Alice, but it really is normal. Alice has just shrunk down to a very small size after eating a cake. Alice had to escape the puppy eating or trampling her. So she threw a stick and left while the puppy was chasing after it, showing her size can remove all control over a situation she could manage if she were normal height. Her attitude about the puppy hadn t changed despite her size, which could have gotten her into more danger than realized.

Alice's size also affects the danger that she encounters. At the end of the story, Alice's size gives her the power to throw the deck of cards all around. During the trial about the tarts, a commotion grows beyond what Alice could handle. Almost out of nowhere, Alice grows to her normal size.

The silliness makes Alice mad and so she started using her size against the cards and threw them about the courtroom. Her size gave her the ability to put an end to the madness in the courtroom. Her level of control went from obedience to the Queen for fear of execution to complete control of her situation. Alice's control of a situation alters greatly when a character looks at her as a child.

Her size makes her not only a child age wise, but size wise to the other characters as well. Carroll shows this when Alice talks to the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar is much larger than Alice is and he looks down on her as inferior. The Caterpillar feels that a person as small as Alice is could never know as much as he.

She keeps persisting until the Caterpillar finally answers a question that she asks. In this situation, Alice has no control; the Caterpillar abstains from answering any of Alice's questions until his are answered. He continues to criticize Alice for not being clear enough, showing that the Caterpillar thought his size gave him the right to criticize another character smaller than himself. Alice's size also gives her the image of something she isn t.

When Alice finishes talking to the Caterpillar, she eats a piece of the mushroom he was sitting on and grows to a towering height. But this time she does not grow evenly, her growth comes in her neck, which becomes so long that it gets entangled in the tree above her. This look causes a mother pigeon to mistake her for a serpent. Alice tries in vein to get the pigeon to calm down and believe that her appearance is misleading and that she is a little girl. But her form is too odd to be a little girl.

Alice's appearance in this situation makes her an unappealing sight for the pigeon. Carroll uses Alice's size in the book Alice in Wonderland to show the different control a child would have over a situation depending on their size while growing up. Times where Alice was in complete control showed what a child looks forward to when they grow up, not to be under control, but to control. Her size shows the way she feels when around different types of personalities. It shows the times when acting grown-up is best and most importantly when to let go and stay a child.