SOURCE: "Solving the Mad Hatter's Riddle," in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. XXV, No. 3, Autumn, 1984, pp. 457-68.

In the essay below, Birns explores the theme of eating and cannibalism in Alice.

Even a cursory glance at Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland will reveal one of its obsessive themes, namely, eating, or more darkly, cannibalism. Most of the creatures in Wonderland are relentless carnivores, and they eat creatures who, save for some outer physical differences, are very like themselves, united, in fact, by a common "humanity." The very first poem found in the text establishes the motif of eating and being eaten:

How doth the little crocodile
 Improve his shining tail,
 And pour the waters of the Nile
 On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin
 How neatly spreads his claws,
 And welcomes little fishes in,
 With gently smiling jaws!

Later on, the eaten object is not...