The Nonsense is Closer Than We Think

I can see how the Alice books can relate to Darwin and science through they're involvement with nature and all that, but it seems to me that, if anything, Carroll is poking fun at evolution and the idea of natural selection, even while he does not deny its existence.

All of the animals in Wonderland have taken on more or less human qualities. So many of the activities that Alice witnesses or participates in are typical human activities, only they are all oddly skewed and twisted. The human being is supposedly the most advanced and intelligent creature on earth at present, yet the comical light in which Carroll describes all of the events in Wonderland seems to suggest that the author views the real world and the activities that humans participate in as something of a joke. Some of the most ridiculous characters are, in fact, known to be representatives of actual people Carroll knew. For instance, "the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle were nicknames for the author's two brothers who studied at the college, and 'twinkle, twinkle, little bat' was a joke at the expense of Carroll's colleague and former tutor, Professor Bartholomew Price" (Dougill 275).

Carroll pokes fun at these strange creatures' human counterparts

Carroll has a lot of fun with poking at ceremonies that are very normal in every day life. The Mad Hatter's crazy tea party makes no sense to Alice, and the reader can easily say that the scene is only comical because real tea parties are nothing like this one, yet Dougill admits that this tea party "has something of the manner of the riotous meals in hall where students bombarded each other with food, and the frog-footman at the duchess's door stands by impassively as a plate is hurled, much as college servants turned a blind eye to the ragging of aristocratic students" (Doubill 276). In a similar manner, how often are trials and the justice system made fun of and parodied as they are in the trial of the stolen tarts?

How different are some of are actions from the ridiculous ones mentioned in Carroll's books?

We may think that we are the most civilized race in existence, but how many things that we do, when looked at objectively, are actually ridiculous? I echo Rachel when I say that the wisest thing said in the Alice books is that "we're all mad here" (Carroll 66). We think that if someone doesn't fit in perfectly to our society they must be "stupid [they are] because [they] do not catch on to the new ways," when really it is our 'new ways' that are stupid much of the time (Dougill 278).

So how does Darwin fit in to all this? Well, Darwin claims that "as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection" (Darwin 239). If we are supposedly progressing towards perfection, though, I am a bit worried about the future of our society, which so often acts, as Carroll points out, completely mad.