When Alice grows too large in the White Rabbit's house why doesn't she use the fan again (like she did in the Hall Of Doors) to shrink herself?
As soon as she realized the fan was shrinking her, she threw it away and it was lost in the sea of tears.
Yes but she found another one in the White Rabbit's house.
Not the same fan, and thus unlikely to have the same results.
Except that the only reason she ate the cake was under the reasoning that foodstuffs seemed to be having effects on her size.
Alice isn't from Wonderland. She still has logic.
But she is in Wonderland and a lot of her frustration comes from the fact that trying to apply logic to situations while she's in it gets her nowhere.
She’s also about seven years old, and a bit scatterbrained. She probably just forgot that the fan would be able to do that.
From the Black Comedy-example, exactly what is the dark joke Humpty Dumpty makes? The best I can guess is that Humpty suggests Alice that she should have asked someone to kill her on her seventh birthday, but it still doesn't seem quite right.
I guessed it was about aborting a baby.
That wouldn't account for the age of seven. It's exactly what it sounds like: Alice says she can't help growing up, and Humpty counters that she could if someone killed her.
Maybe Humpty Dumpty is saying he would need two people to shove him off the wall.
Well, before Queen Victoria took the throne, a child could be hung if they commited a crime, but anyone under seven was too young to be hung. Perhaps the joke is a reference to that?
It's definitely an allusion to dying/having someone kill you, but I seriously think Gardener was reaching on this point. As a lot of other examples show, people love stretching to find darkness in Alice in one way or another. Gardener's idea doesn't make much sense — people can commit suicide very well alone, possibly easier than they can find someone willing to kill them. Much more likely (in my opinion) is that the real joke there was Carroll playing on the use of 'one' as a pronoun — he was very fond of creative, illogical misinterpretations like that — and Gardener took it entirely the wrong way.
I actually have another theory—it's not the use of "One" as a pronoun, but it's a math joke combined with Black Comedy. Carroll was very fond of math, and had plenty of jokes in the Alice series (Alice getting her multiplication tables wrong in Wonderland is the actual answers in certain number systems that aren't base-10, for instance). Here, he's saying that one (as in the number) can't help growing older because any thing exists rather than nothing (as in growing from zero). But you don't need to have two things for something to exist. So that bit was a joke relating to math. As far as the "with proper assistance, you might have left off at seven", that's the straight-up Black Comedy bit, Humpty-Dumpty is suggesting that Alice should have been killed at seven. As for Humpty-Dumpty not mentioning Alice killing herself in a I Cannot Self-Terminate or Death Seeker way, I'd say that's a combination of the aforementioned "suicide=no heaven" thing (it was considered demon-work in Victorian times and would have been far too dark especially since Alice is a child), and that wouldn't allow for the math joke.
The exact wording is important here. He doesn’t say “One can’t, but two can”. After Alice says “One can’t help growing older” he says “One can’t, perhaps, but two can”. The “perhaps” is key. I think he is saying to Alice “Well, if you claim that you can’t kill yourself, I don't necessarily agree, but I won’t insist on the point, as you know yourself better than I do. But I’m quite sure that someone else could kill you”.
Here's an interesting headscratcher: What sort of animal is Pat, the White Rabbit's servant who was digging for apples? Carroll never specifies. (Most assume he was one of the two guinea pigs who was helping Bill when Alice ran out of the house, but we can only assume that.)
I always thought he was either a human or a pig.
In the 1951 Disney movie he and the Dodo are the same person. In the 1999 Hallmark adaptation it's implied that he's a lizard (he and Bill are shown wearing matching outfits). Ultimately, however, there's no conclusive evidence as to what he is.
He’s definitely not the dodo, because Alice notes in the book that his voice is one she hasn’t heard before.
The Rabbit calls him "you goose" at one point, though this is probably just an insult and has nothing to do with his species. Though one audio drama adaptation ran with this and decided to make him a gander, adding this bit of dialogue to the scene:
Rabbit: Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window? Pat: It's an arrum, yer honour! Rabbit: An arm, you goose! Pat: Gander. Rabbit: What?! Pat: I'm not a goose, yer honour, I'm a gander. Rabbit: ...That doesn't matter! Pat: It does to me, yer honour.
Pat is traditionally pictured as one of the two guinea-pigs we see supporting Bill the Lizard after his terrifying experience with the chimney, and later disrupting the Knave of Hearts' trial.
In Through The Looking Glass, are Hatta and Haigha (the White King's messengers) supposed to be the Mad Hatter and the March Hare from the previous book?
No, just Expies who happen to have similar-sounding names. Remember, Looking-Glass Land and Wonderland are two different places.
Complicated by Tenniel's illustrations, in which Hatta and Haigha look identical to their Wonderland counterparts, including the Hatter's hat with its price tag.
Alternate interpretation: since those names are only given by the White King, they might be the literary interpretation of how he pronounces "Hatter" and "Hare" in a posh accent. Alice assumes these to be their names.
I interpreted it (judging by the identical illustrations) that Hatta and Haigha are their actual names, they're just generally called the Hatter and the Hare in an Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" sort of way.
Are the White Queen and the sheep (in the shop) meant to be the same character?
Given how the Chess Problem is detailed, yes. When she moves into the next square, she becomes the sheep.
If Humpty Dumpty only explained the first (and, since it's repeated at the end, last) stanza of "Jabberwocky," what does the rest of the poem mean?
It doesn't mean much except for the absurdity of overwrought and poorly written poems that are usually taken seriously.
"Somebody killed something" as Alice herself put it.
Why are the Chess pieces white and red instead of white and black? Keep in mind that the book was published in 1871, so the answer is most likely not "political correctness".
Some chess sets are white and red. They're less common than white and black sets, but not unheard of.
