Alice in Wonderland

An Analysis of The Pool of Tears by Sparks Notes

Alice becomes confused about her identity as her size changes, mirroring the confusion that occurs during the transition from childhood to adulthood. The reality that she is too large to fit into the garden produces confusion over who she is, which Alice responds to with bouts of crying and self-reproach. Unable to accept the changes she is experiencing, she questions her own identity. Since she cannot remember her own lessons, she believes that she must not be Alice anymore. At first, Alice assumes that she may in fact be someone she knows. The comparisons she draws between herself and Mabel show her class-consciousness, as well as her ties to the material trappings of the Victorian world. Though she tries to use chains of reasoning suited to the aboveground world, the paradox of Wonderland is that she must accept the logic of nonsense or she will go mad with contradiction.

Alice tries to deal with her predicament reasonably, but the episode in the pool of tears illustrates how easily Wonderland distracts her from reason and causes her to react emotionally. The sea of tears is like a punishment for Alice’s giving in to her own emotions. Alice vacillates between crying and scolding herself, going back and forth between emotion and reason. However, as she swims, she doesn’t notice that the landscape has transformed around her. The great hall has become an ocean, while the floor has become a dry “shore.” Instead of reacting to her predicament by rationalizing the problem or starting to cry, she distracts herself by trying to figure out how to address the Mouse. Alice has started to react with total detachment to the absurd situations in which she finds herself. As she proceeds throughout her journeys, she will continue to encounter problems that cause her to react with extremes of emotion or reason. However, in this scene, she has begun to take the absurdities of Wonderland at face value, allowing herself to become distracted so that she ignores the real problem at hand.

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