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Ismael Narez
Professor Lewis
ENGL 114B
31 March 2014
Alices Sizing Adventures
Identity can be used in novels or books to be able to see who the characters are but
sometimes the characters are confused on who they are and question themselves about their
identity. Alices Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll is a book that is about a girl named
Alice who goes to a place called wonderland and has a good adventure and meets a lot of people,
mostly animals. During her adventure in Wonderland, Alice starts to question her identity in both
the physical aspect as well as the mental aspect. One of the main reasons Alice is unsure of who
she is with her identity is because of her constantly changing size. To Alice, identity is linked to
her size: when she is small she is a child and when she grows she thinks she is an adult because
she is all grown. Even though Alice grows bigger she is still a little girl at heart. Alice changing
size throughout the book makes her question if her identity has changed as well.
Identity is a word that some authors tend to use to describe how a specific character is
meant to be portrayed to the readers. Identity can be defined as seeing who a person is by either
individual characteristics. In Alices Adventures In Wonderland, Alice is identified as a small girl
who is just having a good time in Wonderland. She is having a good time until the point where
she meets the caterpillar. She thinks that just because she changes sizes she is a grown woman
now and just does not think she will grow any more.
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In the first chapter, Down the Rabbit Hole, Alice changes her size three different times.
This causes her to question if her identity has changed as well. The first time she changes size is
when she finds the door that leads to the garden. The door was not that very big in fact it was just
about the size of the rabbit she had encountered. Alice finds a bottle on top of the table that read
Drink Me but does not drink it at first just in case it was poison. She takes a little taste and
finds it very tasty so she drinks it and she finds herself the same height as the door and now she
can go through the door to the garden. Alice is now the size that she wants to be to fit through the
door but she forgets the key on the table. She begins to cry and as she cries she finds a box with a
cake in it at the leg of the table. The cake read Eat Me so Alice was hoping to grow back or
make her smaller so she could fit through a crack under the door but she gets bigger, too big that
she starts to cry out of frustration. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, said Alice, a great
girl like you, (she might well say this), to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment I tell
you!(pg.23) This quote is explaining how even though Alice is all big she is still a child because
of how she is crying and she is really big. She then sees the white rabbit again and picks up a fan
that he put down. She questions herself on who she is if she keeps changing size but thinks it is
just a puzzle:
Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just
as usual. I wonder if Ive been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same
when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little
different. But if im not the same, the next question is Who in the world am I?
Ah thats the great puzzle!(25)
This quote explains Alice thinks her identity has changed because she keeps changing sizes and
thinks that this happened to her overnight. Alice fans herself and becomes to notice that she is
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shrinking. She turns off the fan before she gets to small and begins to run towards the door where
the garden is. She notices that she is sinking into water and begins to swim. She began to swim
to shore when she noticed that is was not just an ocean it was her tears when she was bigger. She
then gets to change size but no until she meets the rabbit once again.
In the fourth chapter, The Rabbit Sends in A Little Bill, Alice changes her size once
again. She meets the White Rabbit again but the rabbit confuses her as one of his maids. The
rabbit confuses her as Mary Ann, who is one of his maids. The rabbit sends Alice to his home ot
get a fan and a pair of gloves. She does not want him to get angry so she listens to him and goes
into the house. She finds a small room where inside she sees the fan and two pairs of gloves
sitting by the window. She grabs them and as she starts to walk out, she notices a small bottle
next to the looking-glass. This time the bottle had no label saying DRINK ME. Regardless of
not having the label she drinks it and hopes something would happen because she realizes that
whenever she eats or drinks something she either grows or shrinks. She grew so big that she had
to stick one hand out the window and a foot up the chimney. Alice had thought to herself that she
was more pleasant at home:
When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and
now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me,
that there ought! And when I grow up, Ill write one-but Im grown up now, she
added in a sorrowful tone: at least theres no room to grow up any more here.
But then, thought Alice, shall I never get any older than I am now? Thatll be a
comfort, one way-never to be an old woman-but then-always to have lessons to
learn! Oh, I shouldnt like that!(45)
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The quote from the book explains how Alice even though she is a giant, confuses age with
height. Even though she is a gigantic person, she is still a little girl. This makes her question her
identity even more because she believes to be an old woman already just because her height grew
and she thinks her age grew as well. In the book, Humans Communication in Society, by Jess K.
Alberts, Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, it talks about the many different ways you
can identify yourself with. Age, when thought of strictly as the number of years youve been
alive, is an important identity for everyone. But your age identity is a combination of how you
feel about your age as well as what others understand that age to mean.(Alberts 73). This quote
can be linked to Alice because of how she thinks she is grown up because she gets bigger. Alice
does get big but she really is just a little girl. The other characters see her as a giant girl as she
sees herself as a grown woman. The mental aspect comes into play when she meets a caterpillar.
Alice also gets confused on who she is not only physically but mentally as well. In
chapter five, Advice from a Caterpillar, Alice meets a caterpillar, who is smoking a hookah, he
starts a conversation with Alice:
Who are you? said the Caterpillar. This is not an encouraging opening for a
conversation. Alice replied rather shyly, I-I hardly know, Sir, just at present-at
least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been
changed several times since then. What do you mean by that? said the
Caterpillar, sternly. Explain yourself! I cant explain myself, Im afraid, Sir,
said Alice, because Im not myself you see. I dont see, said the Caterpillar.
Im afraid I cant put it more clearly, Alice replied, very politely, for I cant
understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is
very confusing.(55)
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The quote explains how the Caterpillar is questioning Alice on her identity and even she is
confused on who she really is. Alice is confused with her identity because she has changed so
many times in one day that she just does not know what her identity is. Alice then keeps telling
the Caterpillar that she wants to get back to her normal size. She is not content with her size so
she asks the Caterpillar if he could make her a bit larger. The Caterpillar tells her that she can get
bigger by eating one side of the mushroom but the other side would get her smaller. She ate the
lower left bit and grew to where she wanted to be but her neck was really long and tall. A pigeon
flying by confused her as a serpent because of how ridiculously flexible her neck was. The
pigeon attacked her because it was just trying to protect her eggs:
But Im not a serpent, I tell you! said Alice. Im a-Im a Well! What are
you? said the Pigeon. I can see youre trying to invent something! I-Im a
little girl, said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of
changes she had gone through, that day. A likely story indeed! said the Pigeon,
in a tone of the deepest contempt. Ive seen a good many little girls in my time,
but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! Youre a serpent; and theres no
denying it. (63)
The quote explains how Alice is confused on who she is because of how many times she has
changed in the same day. She is also confused because she says that she is a little girl doubtfully.
The Pigeon asks her who she is and she says that she does not even know because of her
changing a lot. Even though Alices neck was really long, the Pigeon didnt believe her that she
was a little girl.
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Alice in Cartoonland is an article in which it explains how Alice in Wonderland
was made into a cartoon and basically combined the child aspect and the traditional culture
aspects of the original story.
The Alice Comedies (19231927), which featured a live-action girl who
navigated, animated wonderlands in her dreams and her imagination. Like Lewis
Carrolls original character, Disneys Alice acts as a conduit into an irrational and
magical world the opposite of rational life in modernity. For Disney, Alice
provided a way to both tie his own cultural productions to a long tradition of
beloved childrens literature, and present his own vision of an animated
wonderland as coming from the innocent perspective of a little girl.
This quote explains how even though Alice is still represented as a girl but does not change her
identity regardless of how they make her seem in a cartoon or a movie. Alice is not changing her
identity in either if the stories and cartoons.
Identity is used for Alice as a tragedy because she doesnt know who she is throughout
the story. Alice travels wonderland and is questioning herself constantly on who she really is.
She has her identity being changed whether it is physically or mentally. Alice. Alice is mostly
unsure on who she really is because of how she constantly changes sizes and how the Caterpillar
questions her on her identity.





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Works Cited
Alberts, Jess K, Thomas K. Nakayama, and Judith N. Martin.
Human Communication in Society. New Jersey: Pearson, 2012. Print.
Carroll, Lewis. Alices Adventures in Wonderland. New York: Fine, 2004. Print
Elza, Cary. "Alice in Cartoonland: Childhood, Gender,
and Imaginary Space in Early Disney Animation."Animation, 9.1 (2014): 7-26.