Chapter: At last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and addressed
Alice in a languid, sleepy voice.

"Who are _you_?" said the Caterpillar.

[Illustration]

Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at
least I know who I _was_ when I got up this morning, but I think I must
have changed several times since then."

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar, sternly. "Explain
yourself!"

"I can't explain _myself_, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice, "because I'm
not myself, you see--being so many different sizes in a day is very
confusing." She drew herself up and said very gravely, "I think you
ought to tell me who _you_ are, first."

"Why?" said the Caterpillar.

As Alice could not think of any good reason and the Caterpillar seemed
to be in a _very_ unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.

"Come back!" the Caterpillar called after her. "I've something important
to say!" Alice turned and came back again.

"Keep your temper," said the Caterpillar.

"Is that all?" said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she
could.

"No," said the Caterpillar.

It unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said,
"So you think you're changed, do you?"

"I'm afraid, I am, sir," said Alice. "I can't remember things as I
used--and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together!"

"What size do you want to be?" asked the Caterpillar.

"Oh, I'm not particular as to size," Alice hastily replied, "only one
doesn't like changing so often, you know. I should like to be a _little_
larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind," said Alice. "Three inches is such a
wretched height to be."

"It is a very good height indeed!" said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing
itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

In a minute or two, the Caterpillar got down off the mushroom and
crawled away into the grass, merely remarking, as it went, "One side
will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow
shorter."

"One side of _what_? The other side of _what_?" thought Alice to
herself.

"Of the mushroom," said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it
aloud; and in another moment, it was out of sight.

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying
to make out which were the two sides of it. At last she stretched her
arms 'round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge
with each hand.

"And now which is which?" she said to herself, and nibbled a little of
the right-hand bit to try the effect. The next moment she felt a violent
blow underneath her chin--it had struck her foot!

She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, as she was
shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other
bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot that there was
hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last and managed to
swallow a morsel of the left-hand bit....

"Come, my head's free at last!" said Alice; but all she could see, when
she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise
like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay far below her.

"Where _have_ my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I
can't see you?" She was delighted to find that her neck would bend
about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in
curving it down into a graceful zigzag and was going to dive in among
the leaves, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry--a large
pigeon had flown into her face and was beating her violently with its
wings.

[Illustration]

"Serpent!" cried the Pigeon.

"I'm _not_ a serpent!" said Alice indignantly. "Let me alone!"

"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried
hedges," the Pigeon went on, "but those serpents! There's no pleasing
them!"

Alice was more and more puzzled.

"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon,
"but I must be on the look-out for serpents, night and day! And just as
I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the Pigeon, raising
its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I should be free of
them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh,
Serpent!"

"But I'm _not_ a serpent, I tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a--I'm a--I'm a
little girl," she added rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number
of changes she had gone through that day.

"You're looking for eggs, I know _that_ well enough," said the Pigeon;
"and what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl or a
serpent?"

"It matters a good deal to _me_," said Alice hastily; "but I'm not
looking for eggs, as it happens, and if I was, I shouldn't want
_yours_--I don't like them raw."

"Well, be off, then!" said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled
down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as
she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and
every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After awhile she
remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and
she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the
other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had
succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.

It was so long since she had been anything near the right size that it
felt quite strange at first. "The next thing is to get into that
beautiful garden--how _is_ that to be done, I wonder?" As she said this,
she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about
four feet high. "Whoever lives there," thought Alice, "it'll never do to
come upon them _this_ size; why, I should frighten them out of their
wits!" She did not venture to go near the house till she had brought
herself down to nine inches high.

 Alice stands before a large Caterpillar on a large mushroom and the Caterpillar is smoking a hookah. To be frank, a hookah is a very large water bong designed by the Persians for the purpose of smoking any number of drugs. In Victorian England, the hookah was a symbol for Eastern Wisdom and was associated heavily with non-Christian religious wisdom. The Caterpillar, then, is meant to be a kind of Wise Man or Shaman. . The Caterpillar opens the conversation in a wise, but seemingly rude, way: Who are you? he asks. Alice can't seem to respond very well, except to say that she is confused. The Caterpillar won't accept this, but Alice points out that he might understand better after he has transformed into a butterfly and sees what radical change is like. The Caterpillar does not agree with this idea though, and asks Alice to try and remember the school rhymes that she complains she has forgotten as part of her massive bodily changes. Alice recites for him a poem called You Are Old, Father William. Alice recites the poem, but it is changed from the original. In her new version Old Father Williams is old, but because of a good attitude and the leading of a healthy life he is able to perform all sorts of youthful feats, much to the dismay of his son. Alice and the Caterpillar agree that the poem is not how it used to be. The Caterpillar asks Alice what she wants and she replies that it's not any particular size that matters, its all the changing that bothers her. The Caterpillar disagrees and then leaves, but he does say that one side of the mushroom will make Alice grow bigger, the other smaller, seemingly leaving Alice with a tool to control her growth. Alice wishes she didn't have to argue so much with animals, and then goes on to experiment with the magic mushroom. First she is too small. Then she nibbles the mushroom and her neck grows high above the trees where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. Finally Alice gets to be the right size and she sets forth to find that garden she saw in the first chapter. But then she comes upon a very small house and she decides to shrink herself to the appropriate size so as not to frighten the house's inhabitants. In this chapter Alice is faced with the fact that change is natural and good, and that learning how to be both big and small, both an adult and a child, might be a good skill. After all, to be childish in old age seemed very healthy for Father William. One might speculate on the place drugs play in helping people to be both childlike and an adult at the same time. But as this a family web site, I leave that vein of exploration to the reader. The important thing is that Alice is beginning to learn that her changing person is the only constant thing, and that the appropriate thing to do is to figure out when certain aspects of her personality are appropriate. For example, when you come upon a four-foot high house, it is appropriate to shrink to that scale. That is, there are times for being small and times for being big. Adulthood is just about being big, it's about knowing when it is okay to be small again too.

