In the chapters we’ve read so far, Alice struggles with maintaining her identity in the virtual world. For instance, in the first chapter, Alice does not see herself in the mirror, though she sees the reflection of the room she is in. When she walks through the woods (where things do not have names), she loses her sense of self and forgets her own name. Humpty dumpty even tells Alice, “you’re so exactly like other people” (192), which removes her individuality by associating her with every other human.

Although Alice faces numerous instances in which people challenge her identity, Alice cannot seem to prove that she is real. In chapter IV, Tweedledee and Tweedledum tell Alice that she’s only a character in the King’s dream. When Alice insists that she is real and starts to cry, Tweedledee argues, “You won’t make yourself a bit realer by crying” (165). Alice then reasons that if she wasn’t real, she wouldn’t have the ability to cry. However, Tweedledum states, “I hope you don’t suppose those are real tears?” (165). In this world, Alice wrestles with her identity because she cannot verify through evidence, logic and reason that she truly exists. In this way, Lewis Carroll challenges Plato’s idea that people can use logic to prove that they’re in the real or enlightened world. In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” how did the man know, once he left the cave, that he was in the real world? Couldn’t that experience just have been a bigger, more realistic illusion? Can we ever truly prove what is real and what is imaginary?