Alice is falling, but slowly, very slowly; she has the time to pick up a jar of "Orange Marmalade" from a shelf, and the image of her slowly, painfully slow-motion-like, observing and then plucking a jar of jelly from a cupboard which also had maps (foreshadowing that she would be traveling somewhere mysterious perhaps?) paints a strong picture in the mind of the reader. But the fact that there is nothing in the jar, is disappointing, and one can sense that this may be a foreshadowing of how much of the book will go; that is, confusion, deception, the problem of time (the rabbit's watch shows that he is late) - and of course, of reality vs. fantasy.

The beginning of this story is worth taking a close look at in terms of imagery, for it sets th

Lots of examples of imagery come into play in Chapter VI, when Alice finally gets inside the house, and the kitchen was "full of smoke," the Duchess (whom readers later learn is ugly) is nursing a baby while seated on a three-legged stool, the cook was stirring soup and there was too much pepper in the air. All were sneezing except the cook and the Cheshire Cat. But as to the pepper, Gardner notes (61) that the pepper in the air "suggests the peppery ill temper of the duchess." And, was it the custom, Gardner wonders, for lower class Englishmen to dump too much pepper in the soup to mask the taste of "slightly spoiled meat and vegetables?"

She herself has just poured gallons of waters on the ground. And now she is shrinking again, and to stop herself from becoming totally invisible, she drops the fan. Shrinking, growing, shrinking, expanding again; why is Carroll creating this situation for this poor little girl?

Gardner writes (page 22) that perhaps Carroll was using the shrinking and expanding image as a metaphor for the various theories that were being debated in the field of science about "aspects of the expanding-universe theory." Alice's narrow escape in the passage way "calls to mind a diminishing-universe theory," Gardner explains, "once advanced in Carrollian jest by the eminent mathematician Sir Edmund Whittaker." But on a more serious level, there were scientists during Carroll's life time who believed the universe was expanding, and those who believed it was shrinking.

This image is almost beyond sleep and into a drug-like state, a psychedelic kind of fantasy world where one is falling yet also desirous of falling to sleep. And when she lands, and sees its dark overhead, and notices the passage lies before her, a simile is employed by Carroll, right after a brief irony: "There was not a moment to be lost [she is lost]: away went Alice like the wind..." So the reader is moved through imagery from a dream-like falling scene Alice moving as fast as the wind.

And now she was too big to squeeze through a tiny passage into "the loveliest garden you ever saw." The garden's bright flowers and cool fountains bring sharp imagery to mind, fountains being wet to the touch and refreshing to the eye. A simile is used as Alice hopes she could shrink herself "Like a telescope." Alice's taste buds come into play when she drinks the bottle that urged her to "Drink Me"; the amazing varieties of flavors in the drink are clearly intended to enrich the imagery for readers: "cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast." What child wouldn't crave such a splendid ensemble of flavors? This is helpful to Alice, who had to be trembling inside with nervousness at being trapped as she was.

But wait - the little pebbles are actually food, little cakes, not just weapons to harm her. So, again, Alice is eating something, which is Carroll's way of creating the imagery that children and food go together always. The puppy that she plays with, who charges at her stick, makes a barking noise but he is the only animal in the book who does not speak. The image of pebbles becoming food, and the ongoing, fluid, changing imagery of nothing being quite the right size, are consistent with the confusion felt by little girls (and Carroll was very fond of little girls, to the point of adoration and obsession, his biographers say) as they stumble through a grown-up world of varying and confusing signs and signals and sizes.

And what is driving this popularity, one wonders; Sigler asserts that "a possible answer" could be in the "very number and variety of responses enabled by the form and content of the novel..." And that form is heavily endowed with a rich imagery that takes the imagination of a young girl and spreads it throughout the book; and that content is so unique, magical and yet confusing - like the lives of children everywhere - that it stands out as the tallest tree in a veritable forest of high quality

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Approximate Word count = 2989
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)