Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland :

            The White Rabbit

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland has been enjoyed by children and adults for almost one and a half centuries.  It is one of the most famous stories in the English language,  full of puns, wordplay, parody, puzzles, poems and hilarious dialog.  And of course a rabbit plays a major role in all this, a White Rabbit to be exact.

Alice is a young girl who is lounging on her older sister’s lap as her sister reads in a book without pictures or dialog.  It is a summer day in the English farm country when Alice sees a white rabbit with pink eyes running by who can talk.  She hears him say “Oh dear! Oh dear!  I shall be too late!”  The White Rabbit even has a watch.  Alice’s curiosity gets the best of her and she follows the white rabbit down a large rabbit hole.  From here her many adventures in Wonderland begin. 

When Alice finally ends her long descent to the bottom of the hole, she sees the White Rabbit again hurrying down a dark passageway, now saying “Oh dear! my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting” and disappears. 

After eating a Wonderland cake, Alice grows to nine feet tall so begins to cry which creates a pool of tears.  It is then that the White Rabbit appears, this time splendidly dressed with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other, muttering to himself  “Oh, the Duchess, the Duchess!  Oh! Won’t she be savage if  I’ve kept her waiting!”.  Alice tries to get some help from the White Rabbit but he scurries away from the giant Alice into the darkness, dropping his kid gloves and fan.  Alice picks them up and begins fanning herself until she realizes the kid gloves now fit her hands because the fanning is causing her to shrink again.  Then she falls into the salt water pool of her tears for yet another adventure involving various animals and their strange stories.

The White Rabbit returns looking for his kid gloves and fan, still worried about the Duchess, so Alice joins in the search.  He notices her and calls out in an angry voice “Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing out here?  Run home in a moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan!  Quick now!”, having mistaken Alice for his housemaid.  So Alice goes off in the direction the White Rabbit pointed.

Alice comes upon the White Rabbit’s house (a bright brass plate on the door with the name engraved “W. Rabbit”) and hurries upstairs to look for a fan and gloves and finds some, but also a bottle that says “Drink Me” - and she does.  By the time she drinks half the bottle she grows so tall her head is hitting the ceiling - but she continues to grow.  To accommodate her great size, Alice puts one arm out the window and her foot up the chimney.  She was stuck.

Soon the White Rabbit comes home and goes up the stairs calling for Mary Ann to fetch his gloves, but he couldn’t get into the room because Alice’s elbow was blocking it.  So he says he is going outside to get in through the window.  Alice prevents the White Rabbit from entering the window so he orders other animals to help him, one of them a lizard named Bill who calls the White Rabbit “your honour”.  They finally try throwing little pebbles at the window, but when they turn into little cakes Alice eats one and she again becomes small, three inches tall to be exact.  Next she escapes the clutches of the White Rabbit’s cohorts and makes her way into a thick wood.

In the wood Alice comes upon a blue hookah smoking caterpillar sitting on a mushroom.  The Caterpillar tells her that the mushroom can make her big or small depending which side she eats, so through trial and error she learns to control her size.

Alice visits the Duchess’ house who owns a disappearing Cheshire Cat who directs her to a mad tea party outside the March Hare’s house.  At the tea table is the Mad Hatter, March Hare and the Dormouse where time has stopped.  Their madness drives her away to where she finds the entrance to a beautiful garden she is able to enter by becoming very small once again.  Continued:  Click Here