Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Alice Quotes

Alice > The Red King

Quote 37

"Who are at it again?" she ventured to ask.

"Why, the Lion and the Unicorn, of course," said the King.

"Fighting for the crown?"

"Yes, to be sure," said the King: "and the best of the joke is, that it's my crown all the while! Let's run and see them." (Looking-Glass 7.34-37)

The battle between the Lion and the Unicorn is entirely pointless, since neither of them can have the thing he's fighting for. How many real-world battles suffer from the same illogic?

Alice

Quote 38

"I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are," she said to herself, as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place. "One Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse; and, if he misses, he tumbles off himself – and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy – What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire-irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were tables!"

Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads; and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side. When they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.

"It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?" said the White Knight, as he came up panting. (Looking-Glass 8.10-12)

Alice can't tell the difference between victory and defeat, and neither can the reader. Claiming victory is just as arbitrary as the foolish "rules" that the Knights follow.

Alice

Quote 39

. . . she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way. (Wonderland 1.23)

At first we think Wonderland is going to be the complete opposite of the "real world," but then we realize that it's more inconsistent than that.