The book begins with a poem about a golden afternoon spent rowing on a river; the speaker of the poem is pressed by three girls (Prima, Secunda, and Tertia) to tell them a fantastic story. Each time he tries to take a break and leave the rest for "next time," the girls insist that it is already "next time"; in this way, the speaker tells us, the story of Alice's adventures in Wonderland took shape.
Young Alice is sitting by the river bank with her older sister, feeling bored; her sister's book has no pictures or conversation, and thus holds no interest for Alice. Suddenly, a white rabbit scampers back, proclaims that it is very late, and pulls a pocket watch out of its waistcoat. Though she initially does not notice the strangeness of a talking rabbit, when she sees the rabbit's clothes and watch, she becomes very interested. She follows the rabbit, hopping right down a deep rabbit hole after him, giving no thought of how she plans to get out again.
She seems to fall quite slowly, having time to observe the things around her. There are shelves and maps and pictures hung on pegs; at one point, she picks up a jar of orange marmalade and puts it back into place on another shelf. She seems to fall for an interminable amount of time, and begins to worry that she might fall straight through to the other side of the earth. Although she has no one to talk to, she practices some of the facts she learned in school: she knows the distance from one end of the earth to the other, and she says some of the grand words she has heard in her lessons. She worries about missing her cat, Dinah, at dinner. Finally, she reaches the bottom of the hole. She is in a long hallway, and she is just in time to see the white rabbit hurrying away.
The hallway is lined with doors, but all of them are locked. On a three-legged table made of glass, Alice finds a key, but it is far too small for any of the locks. Then, Alice finds a tiny door hidden behind a curtain. The key works, but the door is far too small. Through the door there is a miniature passageway, leading to a lovely garden; the sight of the garden makes Alice more determined than ever to find a way to get through. Alice goes back to the table, where a little bottle has appeared. The label says "DRINK ME," and after checking to see if it marked "poison," Alice drinks it all. She shrinks to a size small enough for the door, but she soon realizes that she has left the key on top of the glass table. She is now to short to reach it; seeing her dilemma and fooling foolish for her mistake, she begins to cry. But she then finds a piece of cake, on which is a little slip of paper that says "EAT ME." Alice eats, and waits for the results.
Analysis:
The poem at the beginning of the book is a reasonably accurate account of how the book came to be. The three girls in the boat are the Lidell sisters, of whom Alice is the second oldest. Carroll often entertained the girls with fantastic stories he made up on the spot. On Alice Lidell's insistence, he took one of his longer tales and wrote it down.
The central theme of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is Alice's struggle to adapt to the rules of this new world; metaphorically, it is Alice's struggle to adapt to the strange rules and behaviors of adults. The rabbit, with his watch and his concern for schedules and appointments, is a representative of this adult world. Alice's story starts when she follows him down the hole.
She is characterized as a bright child who often says or does foolish things; in other words, Alice has much in common with any child who is trying to behave like someone older than she is. Her blunders come about because of unfamiliarity rather than stupidity. She is also an unusually conscientious child; note the moment when she is falling down the hall, and she puts the marmalade carefully back on the shelf for fear that the jar might kill someone if she were to drop it.
As Carroll sees it, the world of children is a dangerous one. Not knowing the rules, however foolish or arbitrary those rules may be, is a source of great peril. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is shadowed by hints of death, and death is a recurring theme of both of Carroll's books. Through the Looking Glass, the second book about Alice's adventures, is an even darker story; in Through the Looking Glass, reminders of death are inescapable. But even here, at the start of Alice's adventure, we are reminded of the frailty of humans and of children in particular. The first hint of mortality comes with Alice's concern about the marmalade jar; her worry shows that Wonderland is not an escape from all of the limitations of the real world. Death is still a possibility. A moment later, Carroll treats us to a very macabre joke. When Alice is falling, she takes pride in her composure: "Well!' thought Alice to herself, after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say any