Question

What are some examples from Alice in Wonderland of Carroll using direct and indirect characterization to inform the audience about characters other than Alice?

Answer 1

Answer:

The Alice books mingle human and animal characters with nursery rhyme figures and game pieces come to life. Alice, of course, is an ordinary little girl from Victorian England. At first her encounters with the other characters in Wonderland are with animals – the nervous White Rabbit, the sluggish Caterpillar, the grinning Cheshire Cat, the mad March Hare, and the sleepy Dormouse. These personified animals, each of which seems to derive its main characteristics from our stereotypes about the animal, are then mixed with seemingly human characters like the Hatter and the Duchess. These "human" characters are even more caricatured and strange than their animal peers.

Of course, at the end of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we discover that many of the characters were actually playing cards come to life. Neither animal nor exactly human, they remind us that the ultimate basis of the story is nothing more than a game. Through the Looking-Glass also mingles human beings like Alice with animals (the Lion and the Unicorn) and game pieces (the various chess pieces, especially the kings and queens) and other seemingly human figures (such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee).

Explanation: