Pig+and+Pepper

THINGS THAT DON’T BELONG A Cheshire cat with a grin that stretches from ear to ear doesn’t belong in a kitchen with livid cooks and harsh duchesses. The duchess is just sitting there nursing her baby, while the cook throws things at them, pots and pans are hitting them both… yet the duchess seems to be completely oblivious to it. The duchess singing about beating her baby when it sneezes, and throwing it in the air does not strike me as proper or befitting for a duchess. The baby turns into a pig. Regardless of the story, that always messes up the picture. A talking cat that can just appear out of thin air, to whatever extent it likes. The cat asked if the baby turned into a pig or a fig, giving the impression that becoming a fig was a possibility.

Carroll is identifying the world as one big paradox. As a mix of ordinary circumstances and things that don’t make sense. Adults seem to live in a different world, where they look down upon children, and treat them as if they don’t know anything. At times, they are completely oblivious to the obvious problems around them. For example, the Duchess is taking care of her baby, while the cook goes around the kitchen chucking pots and pans in her direction. She takes no notice of this, nor does she take heed of the overwhelming amount of pepper in the soup that is making her baby sneeze like crazy.