Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
What does Alice mean by calling her identity “the great puzzle,” and how does this moment frame her struggle with selfhood in Wonderland?
Quick Facts
- Speaker
- Alice
- Chapter
- CHAPTER II. The Pool of Tears
Analysis
In the locked hall after her first size changes, Alice has grown enormous, scolded herself for crying, and produced the literal “pool of tears.” The White Rabbit rushes by, drops his fan and gloves, and flees when Alice timidly asks for help. Picking up the fan in the sweltering hall, Alice continues talking to herself and, amid dizziness from shrinking again, tests whether she is still “herself” by summoning schoolroom knowledge. Multiplication and geography come out wrong, and her attempt to recite a moral verse turns into the crocodile parody. In this haze of bodily flux and academic misfires, she asks, “Who in the world am I? … that’s the great puzzle!” just before noticing she is rapidly dwindling to two feet and racing back—unsuccessfully—to the little garden door.
What the line means
From didactic certainty to experimental selfhood
In Chapter II Carroll stages a comic stripping-away of Victorian certainties. Alice’s comparisons to Ada and Mabel show how social identity had been tied to superficial markers (hair, cleverness). Her school tests—tables, capitals, and the moral verse—malfunction precisely when she needs them, implying that rote recall cannot stabilize the self under novel conditions. Even her language training misfires: she addresses the Mouse via Latin cases and then French (“Où est ma chatte?”), producing offense instead of communication. The quote stands at the pivot where Alice ceases to assume that correctness equals identity and begins to ask questions. This shift foreshadows the Caterpillar’s “Who are you?” and her later courtroom defiance. By labeling identity a “puzzle,” she implicitly licenses trial-and-error—trying sizes, foods, and tones—over obedience. Wonderland’s nonsense works as a diagnostic: it reveals that a self grounded only in propriety and lessons is brittle, while a self willing to test, revise, and speak back can adapt.
Alice’s body stretches and shrinks while her memorized verses and facts warp. The quote arises as she realizes neither steady size nor perfect recitation defines “Alice.” Selfhood must be rebuilt through observation and choice, not inherited scripts.
By naming identity a “puzzle,” Alice moves from self-scolding to problem-solving. This reframing prepares her to treat Wonderland’s rules as hypotheses, leading to later successes with the mushroom and her refusal of “sentence first.”
Links to themes and characters
- Caterpillar: His cool “Who are you?” (Chapter V) echoes and tests this moment; the mushroom enables measured experiments with size. - White Rabbit: His fan inadvertently shrinks Alice, dramatizing how external tokens (gloves, fan) can reshape the self. - Trial scene: Alice’s growth during the Knave’s trial culminates this arc—she asserts judgment over nonsensical authority. Themes: identity-and-growing-up; bodily-change-and-autonomy; logic-language-and-nonsense; education-and-mock-pedagogy; rules-games-and-social-performance.