The White Rabbit

Throughout both of the Alice stories, Alice meets several characters during her adventures in Wonderland.  Alice is basically our looking glass into this fantastical world and each character that is introduced adds something new to the personality of the setting.  The character that leads Alice into Wonderland in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the white rabbit.  Alice is taken aback once she hears a rabbit saying to itself "Oh dear!  Oh dear!  I shall be too late!"  causing a sense of urgency and curiosity within Alice (Carroll 10).  In fact, her curiosity was so strong that she impulsively followed the rabbit down a rabbit hole without considering where it may lead her or what she was leaving behind.  Without the white rabbit, Alice would have never discovered such a wondrous world in which she discovered herself as well as developed relationships with characters she would never encounter in her own reality.  Although Alice is completely enthralled with the white rabbit, he is not always so fond of her.  For instance, when Alice follows the white rabbit to his home and grows a mile high inside, he is terrified of her and claims that they "must burn the house down" in order to get rid of her (Carroll 36).  In addition to this threat, in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, the white rabbit goes as far as to call Alice a monster repeatedly.  The white rabbit does not see anything special about Alice, even though she is unlike any other character in Wonderland.  If anything the white rabbit tends to view Alice as either threatening or bothersome.  The white rabbit acts as Alice's motivation throughout the whole story.  He drives her to continue her adventure in the hopes of finding him and understanding his panic and fear of being late.  There are not too many interactions between the two in the book, but the white rabbit still plays a major role in Alice's reasoning for coming to Wonderland in the first place.