CHAPTER IX. The Mock Turtle’s Story
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Quick Facts
- Word Count
- 2,266
Summary
Chapter IX opens with the Duchess reappearing in uncharacteristic affection, pressing aphorisms on Alice—“Everything’s got a moral”—while delivering comically strained maxims, from mustard-mines to the tautological “Be what you would seem to be.” Alice asserts “I’ve a right to think,” but the Queen’s sudden arrival and threat—“either you or your head must be off”—erases the Duchess on the spot. Resuming the chaotic croquet, the Queen keeps ordering beheadings until nearly everyone stands under sentence, after which she dispatches Alice to hear the Mock Turtle’s history. The King quietly pardons all, and the Gryphon, amused—“they never executes nobody”—escorts Alice to a weeping Mock Turtle. In a mock-heroic lament, he tells of schooling under the sea: the Tortoise (“because he taught us”), “Reeling and Writhing,” Arithmetic branches like “Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,” and arts from “Drawling” with an old conger-eel to a Classics crab who taught “Laughing and Grief.” Time itself becomes a pun as “lessons” lessen from ten hours to nine and so on. Alice’s attempts at reasonable inquiry—asking about the eleventh and twelfth days—meet with interruptions. The chapter shifts Alice from court spectacle to parodic pedagogy, exposing moralizing, justice, and education as performances governed by language games rather than sense.
Analysis
Parody as Pedagogy: From Court Spectacle to Classroom Satire
The chapter yokes two theaters of performance—sovereignty and schooling—to Carroll’s language engine. First, the Duchess floods Alice with detachable morals (“Everything’s got a moral”), turning ethical wisdom into a vending machine of sayings. Her ungainly maxim—“Be what you would seem to be,” expanded into a syntactic tangle—demonstrates how form can counterfeit depth. Alice’s polite resistance—“I’ve a right to think”—signals growing intellectual autonomy, yet the Queen’s entrance cuts the sermon short mid-word (“m—”), proving that in Wonderland power can erase discourse by fiat. The King’s sotto voce pardon—“You are all pardoned”—and the Gryphon’s demystifying aside—“they never executes nobody”—expose the executions as stage business, aligning the court with ritualized emptiness rather than justice.
Carroll then relocates Alice to the classroom, where content is replaced by punning curricula. The Mock Turtle’s “Tortoise because he taught us” rebukes Alice’s literal question, reversing student and examiner: she becomes the one scolded for reason. Subjects—“Reeling and Writhing,” “Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision”; “Seaography”; “Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils”—convert Victorian improvement into sound-driven nonsense. Even time is grammatized: “lessons” that “lessen” parody timetables by etymology. When Alice infers that the eleventh day must be a holiday and presses for the twelfth, the Gryphon interrupts, redirecting to “games,” as if conversation itself were a classroom bell.
Taken together, the Queen’s performative terror and the Mock Turtle’s mock-curriculum develop three linked critiques: authority operates as spectacle; education prizes recitation over understanding; and language governs both by custom rather than reason. Alice’s arc advances in small assertions—choosing not to be jostled by maxims, asking targeted questions, and recognizing show for show. Wonderland’s lesson here is meta-pedagogical: meaning must be tested, not taken from the tone of a crown or the grammar of a schoolbook.
The Duchess treats ethics as collectible tags—“the moral of that is…”—but Alice counters with “I’ve a right to think.” The Queen’s interruption mid-“moral” dramatizes how capricious power can silence didacticism, revealing both maxims and decrees as competing performances rather than sources of truth.
The Queen sentences nearly everyone while arches desert their posts; the King later whispers blanket pardons. The Gryphon’s “they never executes nobody” unpacks the charade: punishment functions as choreography to maintain fear, not as law grounded in evidence or proportion.
The Mock Turtle’s subjects—“Reeling and Writhing,” “Uglification,” “Derision”—and the etymological joke that “lessons” lessen lampoon Victorian schooling that confuses drill with learning. Alice’s reasonable queries hit interruptions, modeling how institutional talk can repel understanding to preserve routine.
The Mock Turtle’s ‘Education’ at a Glance
- Master: an old Turtle called “Tortoise” (because he “taught us”)
- Arithmetic branches: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, Derision
- Other subjects: Mystery (ancient and modern), Seaography
- Arts: Drawling, Stretching, Fainting in Coils (taught by a conger-eel)
- Classics master: an old crab; courses in Laughing and Grief
- Schedule: ten hours first day, nine the next—“lessons” that lessen