Chapter 8: The Queen’s Croquet Ground
Summary:
Alice goes inside the garden and three gardeners that have made mistakes in roses` colors and now, they are adjusting nervously the roses before the arrival of the Queen of Hearts. After that, the Queen of Hearts and the King arrive and they are surrounded by playing cards who work as soldiers. The Queen asks for Alice`s name and she asks her about the reason behind the trembling of gardeners and Alice answers flippantly to her question which makes the Queen angry and she orders for Alice’s beheading but fortunately, the king asks the Queen to stay calm. When the Queen discovers why the gardeners are trembling, she asks for their beheadings but Alice could hide them in a flowerpot without letting the Queen discover that. Alice goes with the Queen to play croquet but she faces difficulties in coping with this game because it differs from the croquet above the ground; the mallets are flamingos and the balls are hedgehogs. Suddenly, without any alert, the Queen asks for everyone`s beheading and Alice plans to escape faraway but she sees the smiling Cat and Alice immediately tells it about Queen`s mad behavior. The king sees the smiling Cat and tries to bully him but he couldn`t; therefore, the King tells the Queen about that and she asks for his beheading but they can`t cut off his head because he only has a head without a body. They ask Alice to find a solution and she suggests telling the Duchess who is the owner of this cat. When the Duchess arrives, the Cat has already disappeared.
Analysis:
From the beginning of the story, the reader notices that Alice wants to see the garden that she searches a lot for it. Finally, she finds the garden in this chapter, but it is not like the garden that she imagines in her mind. The garden of wonderland is controlled by the power of the Queen who kills anyone annoying her which makes the garden dark and full of murder. To Alice, now the concept of the garden has changed; it is not a place for beauty and relaxation anymore but a place of fear and anxiety. In chapter 4, Alice is surprised when she realizes that in the wonderland animals give orders to the humans but in this chapter, she is surprised even more when she sees the Queen, who is a living card, is giving orders to the animals; she gets confused that inanimate objects are at the highest level then the animals come after which contradicts the natural facts above the ground that the inanimate objects are at the lowest level. Furthermore, Alice realizes at the end of the chapter that she may have authority in this wonderland when the King asks her how to cut off the head of the smiling Cat and she gives him a suggestion of asking the Duchess.
