Analysis Of Alice's 'Caterpillar'

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An expansion of this stubbornness is the problems it causes through its rejection of others for not matching Alice 's standards, leading to instances of madness in the context of her own standards. Alice’s meeting with the Caterpillar is where she highlights the madness caused by this stubbornness. The madness is seen in Alice’s refusal, “well, perhaps your feelings may be different…it would feel very queer to me,” of the Caterpillars solution that change should effect one “not a bit” (Carroll 41). At first, her rejection seems reasonable as she is not going against any clear benchmark of behavior. Yet, she supposed to use reasoning to come to this conclusion, which requires her to look at all the evidence. However, she is too focused on the …show more content…

She says, “well, perhaps you may be different” discrediting his statement as exclusive to him. Followed immediately by, “but I would feel,” showing she put barely any thought into the decision to continue with her previous conclusion despite new information, inferring a predetermination to reject The Caterpillar (Carroll 41). This actively works against her own reasoning, which requires her to look at all the facts. These observations about his “very short remarks” and how “she had never been so much contradicted” taint her perception of his answers causing her to respond in a direct, dismissive way that she rarely uses. Again, there is madness her as she ignores her own standards for reasoning and manner. Therefore, for Alice at least, there is a need to follow a certain script or standards before she can even begin to focus on reasoning properly. This struggle is not just because of Alice’s personality, she is trapped by outside forces as much as personal …show more content…

A perfect example of this is her previously mentioned identity crises. Alice never forms a cohesive argument. Sure, as shown above, she applies reasoning to the problem. She realizes “I can remember feeling a little different” which means she is starting with a fact (Carroll 18). She broadens it to commenting on how being different means she is not the same leading to the question “who in the world am I,” and so on. All of this follows the reasoning process. Yet, as she reasons out the problem several different times, with similar questions such as “Who are you”, etc., her logic ends up illogical. Her conclusions change from, “I’m must have been changed for Mabel” to “I-I’m a little girl” to “I-I hardly know” all in situations where she has similar information and a similar question, breaking the standard of reasoning that the same information leads to the same conclusion (Carroll 19; 48; 40). Through this, she is showing madness. The madness, however, is caused by her lack of information. She does not have the information needed to define what identity means seen in her constantly changing what is relent to identity. In some instances, she relates it to features saying she could not be someone because “her hair goes in such long ringlets and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all” (Carroll 18). At others, she rejects the notion

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