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“Who are you?” She is unable to answer.

When I first read this I figured it meant be yourself. However, I read it again and again until it confused me out of my mind. I finally got something quite interesting out of it.

The whole point of Alice’s Adventure is to discover who she is. Often as human being we struggle with our own identity because of the pressure to live up to other peoples standards. Alice did not know who she was. In chapter 5 Alice meets a Caterpillar. The Caterpillar asked her a question that we are most familiar with, “Who are you?” Alice did not know how to answer. She replied, “I hardly know sir…” When we dream we often dream of things that we desire. We go through interesting journeys in our dreams that lead us to what we want. In Alice’s dream she is trying to discover who she is. So the Duchess tells her “Be who you seem to be.”

This is her transition to becoming more of an adult. Wonderland is like the Adult world she lives in and at first is incomprehensible. To be able to cope in this world Alice has to start thinking as an adult would. Carroll was very fond of the way that children handled the world and approached different situations. In his story he wanted to show his readers the way a child looks at the adult world.