What makes us look into mirrors and want to enter into the world that it reflects? There was something enough for Lewis Carroll when he gave Alice a chance to enter into another world and move towards becoming a queen at the end of a figurative chessboard. One can either rack their brains on the symbolism or accept the fact it may have been the author's design to throw as many backward situations as possible enough to perhaps perplex Alice so that she would want to run home. In other words Lewis purposely created all these contradictory characters so that the girl who wanted to escape her strict home would love to return, especially when the real world offers logical reasons for being. Of course I am referring to logical as it concerns the child.
The drive of the story is that Alice must reach the end square of her fantasized patchwork land. I take it that the child wants to be recognized as deserving something from the adult world. The way that she has to behave in order to move on to the end of the chessboard land is secondary to her movement, though in fact she must have been perfectly still just as she was with the black queen. She only thought she was moving through the air then. We learn she is in a way troubled by the adult world but the escape world she enters into soon causes the necessary tension for her to move onto the next square.
It has been suggested that Carroll did not like children and that may be present through the rough imagery that Alice is faced with and the fact that one of the queen suggests it would have been better had she been punished for something she had not done. One image transforms itself into another, well in keeping with a dream state and the child is faced sitting across the table from a sheep.
Then she is faced with understanding how much she can get suggesting the figurative form of an expression when the animal storekeeper understands only the literal sense. Where else could empty shelves hold stock except in the world of make believe or a world as seen through a mirror?
Where else could one imagine a child reaching for what she thinks she can get over the side of the boat without looking at herself objectively? This adventure points to an elusive future, something she will have to leave to get back into the present moment.
