Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar
Summary:
The Caterpillar asks Alice about who she is but Alice couldn`t find any answer for that according to the changes that she has gone through in this wonderland which make her confused about her identity. Then, the Caterpillar asks Alice about how many more inches she wants to be, and Alice answers that there is no particular number but she wants to be bigger. After that, the Caterpillar leaves Alice and tells her that one side of the mushroom will make her bigger and the other side will make her shrink. Alice eats a small piece from the right side and waits for a change. She finds her body shrinking until her head touches her feet then she rushes to the left side and eats a large piece. Unfortunately, Alice`s neck is the only part of her body that becomes longer like a giraffe. Then, she encounters a Pigeon and he claims that because Alice has a long neck, she must be a snake that wants to eat Pigeon`s eggs. Alice denies his claim and she says that she is just a little girl although she is now not carrying human` features. The Pigeon leaves Alice and Alice continues eating from the mushroom until she reaches her normal tall. At the end of the chapter, Alice wants to return back to the garden that will lead her to her home but on her way, she encounters a house and she decides to go in without scaring the owners; therefore, she returns back to the mushroom and eats from the right side in order to be smaller.
Analysis:
In this chapter, Alice faces confusion about her identity and what she is. The same confusion encounters Alice in chapter two when she wants to assure if she remains Alice or someone else, so she starts reciting her own lessons and she finds that she couldn`t remember it because her brain is under the effect of the wonderland. This confusion ends by confirming that if she is not Alice, then she must be Mabel because of her lack of remembering. The same confusion returns to occur twice in this chapter. The first one is when the Caterpillar asks her who she is and she couldn`t answer because her mind believes that there are many Alices inside her according to the changes that she has gone through in this adventure and she is not sure to which Alice she belongs. The second one is when the Pigeon accuses that she is a snake who wants to eat Pigeon’s eggs but she says that she is not like that at all and she confirms that she is a little girl but she can`t give evidence for that. The special event in this chapter is that Alice has the ability to control her size by eating one particular thing that she knows which is the mushroom; if she wants to be smaller, she will eat from the right side of the mushroom and if she wants to be bigger, she will eat from the left side of the mushroom.
