Analysis of Setting and Structure

In the story Through the Looking glass the story is told in a metaphor for fate. They use chess rules in the story which in the end Alice becomes the Queen. With the framework of the chess game, Alice has no control to what happens, and outside forces influence her choices and actions. Just as Alice exerts little control of her movement toward becoming a queen, she has no power over her maturation and acceptance of womanhood. At the beginning of the game, Alice acts as a pawn with limited knowledge of the world around her. She has no power to influence outcomes and does not understand the rules of the game, so an outside force guides her along her journey, making different situations and encounters that push her along toward her goal. Though she wants to become a queen, she must follow the rules of the chess game, and she discovers that every step she takes toward her goal occurs because of outside forces acting upon her, such as the mysterious train ride and her rescue by the White Knight. By using the chess game as the guiding principle, Carroll suggests that a larger force guides individuals through life and that all events are preordained. Carroll was trying to imply that someone is watching us and helping us make decisions. Like Alice we don’t have control of our fate right now and we can only do what we can to stay on the right path. This is what the story implies.