TWEEDLEDEE: Contrariwise . . . if it was so, it might
be . . . That’s logic.
The inversion motif appears on a larger scale in the fight
between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, since it appears at the beginning
of the chapter in Alice’s recitation and ends the chapter as an
actual event. Their scripted quarrel reveals the power of language
to affect outcomes. Language has an almost magical effect on Tweedledee and
Tweedledum in creating a rattle that did not exist before the two met
Alice. Language also seems to cause their battle. Tweedledum and
Tweedledee must play out the events of Alice’s rhyme, and their lives
are destined to imitate the events in the poem.
The episode with the sleeping Red King causes Alice to
question whether or not she actually exists. The possibility that
she may be a figment of the Red King’s dream complicates her already
slippery hold on reality. Tweedledee’s suggestion questions the
stability of reality itself. Alice has already experienced the loss
of her name, a fundamental aspect of her sense of self. Here, she
loses the security of her material existence in the world. If the
Red King is in fact dreaming Alice into existence, then he is the
only thing in Looking-Glass World that truly exists. The only way
to test this hypothesis would be to wake the Red King up, but if
he has imagined Alice, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee, none of them
would be able to ask him about it, since they exist only in his
dreams and thus cannot affect his waking life. Even Alice’s emotions
are artificial, since her tears are only real to her. Though the
tears serve as evidence of real emotion, that real emotion exists
as a figment of the King’s dream.
The episode of the Red King’s dream opens up greater implications
for Alice and the readers about reality and the nature of God. The
presence of the Red King suggests the notion that no person actually
exists, but lives solely as a fragment of a divine imagination. The
chessboard motif makes sense as a tool for organizing the story since
it functions as an allegory for human life in general. The characters
in the story live a deterministic existence in which they have no
free will and move about according to the will of their creator. Free
will is an illusion in this world, since the residents of Looking-Glass
World must follow the rules of the chess game in all of their actions.
The idea of free will as an illusion challenges our understanding
of Alice’s adventures, since we have understood that they exist
as part of Alice’s own imagination. By introducing the possibility
that Alice acts under the manipulation of a larger divine force, Carroll
presents the idea that human life exists as an abstraction of the
imagination of a larger divine force.
