In The Looking Glass By Alice

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The character, Alice, in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll was created as a foil, a contrasting figure, to the residents of wonderland. She is kind, imaginative, and polite. Her traits differ from those of whom she meets in Wonderland. Those of this imagined world are often ill-mannered, but with good intentions. The Red Queen, for example, is the first human-like creature Alice meets and the Queen has all sorts of nitpicky comments for her. The Red Queen goes on about things in an arbitrary sense and is not very logical. “I don’t know what you mean by your way,’ said the Queen: ‘all the ways about here belong to me… Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say, it saves time,” (Carroll). Where at first the young girl can’t help but try …show more content…

Her eventual attentiveness could be borne from her polite nature and want of companionship, as well as from the persona of the Red Queen. The Queen represents a governess or teacher-type and thus Alice learns to listen, even when she does not fully want to. Whenever Alice is afraid she has offended someone, she tries her best to remedy the situation. “Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen’s tone that she was a little offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to the top of the hill” (Caroll). Alice gives of a persona of being well-trained, yet still childish and demanding. However, as she moves further through Wonderland she begins to gain more control of her childish impulses, such as being angry with the world for ‘making things difficult’ for her when she could not find her way through a maze. In this way, Alice is a dynamic character. She matures throughout the story as she finds out more about …show more content…

In order to be ‘queened’ Alice must make it to the eighth square, meeting different residents along the way. When Alice comes across Tweedledee and Tweedledum, halfway through her journey, she views them in wonderment. “They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive,” (Carroll). This shows Alice is still learning and can sometimes make mistakes. She continues to travel and as she does so she slowly matures. When she has reached the seventh square, where the Red Knight attempts to take her captive, she is able to take much more in at once. When Alice first crawled through the looking glass, she was a child, but at this point she is able to better empathize with those around her. This is shown in her response to the Red Knight, “Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: 'You 're my prisoner! ' the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse. Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again” (Carroll). She places the Knights before herself and is able to see that, though the Red Knight claims he wishes to take her prisoner; he is actually not a threat. She bases this off of her earlier interactions with characters and the backwards way in

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