Two settings appear in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The first is a riverbank in an unnamed location. It seems very normal and boring; Alice nearly dozes off next to her sister while reading a book. Carroll devotes very few words to Alice's initial location before she plunges down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. The lack of specificity about the initial setting evokes a sense of normalcy but also creates curiosity that deepens when Alice begins her adventure.
The second location is Wonderland, which differs drastically from the normalcy of the riverbank. It is a strange world that makes Alice question her beliefs. In Chapter 1, the first description of Wonderland consists of a hall with many doors:
She found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.
Having fallen down the rabbit hole, Alice finds herself in a door-lined hall. This seems even more absurd than the talking rabbit. She soon finds that there is no obvious way out of Wonderland and uses a tiny golden key to open a door, which marks the beginning of her adventures. Along the way, she discovers many strange creatures like the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, and the Mad Hatter.
The two settings represent reality and fantasy, wakefulness and dreaming. The riverbank scene helps ground the story and creates a delightful contrast between the wakeful Alice who tries to avoid dozing off from boredom and the dreaming Alice who goes on a radical adventure through Wonderland.
