Help with the book Alice in Wonderland!?

Question

can anyone give me a short analyzation of any of these quotes???

1. The Duchess: If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.

2. The Cheshire Cat: We're all mad here.

3. The Queen: Off with his head!

4. The Duchess: Tut, tut, child! Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

5. Alice: If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

***also, is that last quote from the book? because i heard it in the movie, but didn't remember it from the book.

any help would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!

Answer 1

You have to remember that Lewis Carroll wrote a lot of parodies and logic problems into his stories.

"Everything has a moral" is a parody of Victorian childrens' fiction in which everything was written to be "improving" ie to teach something that the Victorians thought important. Usually something terribly dull like "honesty is the best policy", "hard work conquers all difficulties" - all true but not very exciting.

"Off with his head" is a famous line from (I think) Richard III by Shakespear that Victorian actors were famous for making a real big deal out of. Dickens describes the same thing in one of his short stories.

"We're all mad here" is a logic joke. If everyone is mad, that includes the Cat. Therefore you cannot trust anything he says. Therefore they are not all mad in which case the Cat might be sane and telling the truth when he says everyone is mad. In which case everyone is mad and you're back at the beginning again.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

I have read this book many times and only seen the movie about three times. I read alot of books and i would be more than happy to help you.

1. What she means in this context is that, since she is the mean and evil one in the books, she is the type of character that has an attitude like, "everyone should keep to themselves and not bother me and my minions and the world would be a better place." Remember, she is a bitter Dutchess, so her world views are not only limited, its very angry and miserable.

2. The Cheshire Cat is the comidian in this tale. When he says this, he means that every charachter in this book is "mad" or in other words crazy, nutty, foolish, silly, wacky, etc. If you have seen the Disney movie and read the book, you will notice that everyone in that story is a little off. The only one that may have some kind of sense is The White Rabbit, who is always saying, "Oh im going to be late!"

3. She is famous for beheading people. She says that becuse in the book and the movie, her favorite game is croquet (with flamingos and hedgehogs as a ball) If someone loses or does not play to her expectation, she yells "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!" And when Alice plays, and she scolds the queen for being mean, the queen says "OFF WITH HER HEAD!"

4.This means that she is teaching Alice a lesson: if you notice in most fables, fairy tales and stories, there is always a moral. A moral in detail means that there is always something to learn from someone or something or an action a person has made, considerable from a victory or a mistake. When she says to Alice "only if you can find it", she means that if she is around a certain person, place or thing, there is a meaning.

5.Easily quoted: She means that in our everyday reality world, there is some kind of seriousness, to keep the world from going crazy. Also she means that this world is too stiff and uptight and does not have enough fun or relaxation. If this was her world, everything would be fun, exciting, relaxing and happy.
They put that in the movie because the way Lewis Carrol writes this book, is put in Old English, becuase this book was written in the 18th century, so the wording is a little more complicated. What books are today are modern English.

Here is a website I would like for you to check out. It has alot of useful information:
http://disney.go.com/characters/alice/index.html

Answer 3

i haven't read the book but i'll take a guess~ :)

1) if everyone took care of their own problems, no one would be bothering anyone else. therefore, the world would go "faster" because more things would get accomplished

2) everyone has something "wrong" about them... not everyone will have the exact same type of logic or sense of humor or sense of Right and Wrong....

3) the queen did not care for anything that got in her way or irritated her, so the easiest thing for her to do was "kill" them, so they would no longer bother her. similar to olden days when they used the guillotine to behead "bad" people...however, to the queen, anything and everything was "bad" if it inconvenienced her

4) altho she was in the "crazy" world of Wonderland, the Duchess still shows that there is still something u can learn from the situation..... even tho Others are crazy, you can still learn something as to Why they were crazy, or weird, or did things their way, even if it doesn't make sense to YOU, it may make sense to someone else

5) the fact that alice says "you see?", it requires that person to "understand" what she is saying...but if everything was nonsense, what would be, wouldn't be; then the person would "not see" in order to conform to what she was saying! so to ask someone if they understand, when all u want is something u cannot understand, there will never be a resolution

***not sure if it's in the book...but good luck!