CliffsNotes on Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Author:Lewis Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Chapter 6

Summary

The Caterpillar’s nasty mood, even if he does seem nonchalant, is a subtle symbol of all the verbal chaos in Wonderland. Yet, here, in Chapter VI, that linguistic nonsense is replaced by random, violent, physical disorder in the action of the story.

Alice has come upon a house, just as a Fish-Footman delivers a letter to the Frog-Footman of the house. The letter is an invitation, which the Fish-Footman reads: “For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.” In a marvelous example of Wonderland’s semantic, verbal fun, the Frog-Footman reverses the invitation: “From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.” In reality, it should end with “From the Queen.”

When Alice attempts to enter the house, she finds herself further into the world of nonsense. The Frog-Footman is sitting before the door and is totally uncooperative as she knocks at the door. He replies to her every question in “absurd” reasoning—as if Alice had suddenly found herself in a Samuel Beckett play. With elegant precision, the Frog-Footman explains that her knocking on the door is useless because he can only answer the door from inside. Again, we see an illustration where the reply to a question is never addressed to the question, but to something else. Alice’s knocking on the door is “useless,” she is told, because the Frog-Footman, who opens the door from inside the house, is now outside; thus, he can’t answer her; and, in any event, the noise from inside the house would prevent the Frog-Footman from hearing her knock even if he were inside. Truly, this is the World of the Absurd.

Yet, this kind of confusion is quite normal in Wonderland; all of reality here is viewed, so to speak, on a scale of values which are completely alien to the “normal” Victorian world of Alice.

A large plate suddenly comes flying out of the house and barely misses hitting the Frog-Footman’s head. The Frog-Footman is totally oblivious to this. And his indifference to chaos is characteristic of Wonderland’s creatures and indicates to Alice that there surely must be an underlying order here. Or perhaps it involves only a fatalistic indifference. For the Caterpillar and the Frog-Footman, things have no purpose. “I shall sit here,” the Frog-Footman muses, “on and off for days and days.”

“But what am I to do?” asks Alice.

“Anything you like,” says the Frog-Footman.

The Frog-Footman’s reply to Alice’s question is idiotic nonsense, and with a child’s simplicity, Alice finds the Frog-Footman’s values totally illogical. Alice has been brought up to believe that things should be done and that they should be done with a purpose. In her world, there is order and there are schedules and tasks to be accomplished at certain times. Carroll’s method in creating the tension between these two worlds is to increase the difference in the values “above-ground” and those of Wonderland. One is, therefore, not entirely correct in relating Wonderland’s anarchy and nonsense to the creatures’ irrational behavior. Alice, in fact, is making the assumption that there is—and should be —an order here; she is trying to make logic from illogic.

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