The Themes
| Changing Identity | Death | Social Class Distinctions |
| Rule and Misrule | Language | Meaning in Dreams, Nonsense and Puzzles |
Language
Language and its occasional duality of meaning is a theme linked to the changing nature of identities. Everyday words are far less useful to Alice in her Wonderland than she might perhaps have expected because their identity/meaning is not fixed. Even the mouse's 'tale' is stretched to become the shape of a tail, an example of Emblematic or Figured Verse, where poems are laid out to resemble visually their subject matter. In Wonderland puns, homonyms and word play abound. Not/knot and taught us/tortoise are just two examples of word confusion that Carroll uses to befuddle Alice. Linked to this is the idea that words can’t be just swapped round as if their identity were the same. In the tea party scene Alice asserts that she says what she means or at least “I mean what I say -- that’s the same thing”. It is pointed out the meaning is not the same: ‘I see what I eat’ is not the same as ‘I eat what I see’. In the show Woody Allen is the March Hare at the Tea Party and his example is more New York in its construction: I like the sex I get is not the same as I get the sex I like!
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