In chapter nine, the reader is bombarded with facile morals that the Duchess deems substantial. Alice seems somewhat cautious to this rapid fire of “knowledge”, seeming to organize this information with the other nonsense rattling around in her brain. After saying this numerous times, I’ll say it again: Alice learns so many lessons in this story as she meets new characters and new social structure, this whole scene might be a lesson in itself.
While reading the chapter, I was very careful around this area. The Duchess says such irrelevant things, such as, “Birds of a feather flock together.” and so on. She says, “Every thing’s got a moral,” and she tries very hard to patch some together. All these farcical “morals” being thrown around could possibly be a very random distraction that Alice can learn from. The extraneous information being given to Alice may serve as a lesson to not take to heart such things of irrelevancy. After all, this encounter with the Duchess has a very short duration and is placed at the beginning of the chapter.
Alice’s journey is short, as we know. Every character she encounters has something to offer her, lesson wise. When Alice first meets the Duchess, we get a rather hostile feeling from her. Now in this chapter she acts as if she was a completely different character. There might be a lesson in that too. The Duchess’s shift in personalities might have something to do with the changes of environment. Nevertheless, Alice doesn’t mind the morals thrown at her too much, because she continues along in her journey normally as always without being distracted. What a smart girl.
Darcy S.
Connor S.
Devon H.
Morgan P.
Scott Mitchell
Alice's Pack of Cards 
Nothing phases this girl Alice! I can’t decide between whether she is absorbing all these random little bits of info, or if they are just bouncing right off her pretty blonde hair and richosheting back into Wonderland. Yes, i believe these morals are irrelevant at this point in time, but if you take that situation minus the Duchess plus an authority figure from Alice’s real life multiplied by a society of rules and regulations to the power of seventeen you get a perfectly logical situation ;) . The only thing illogical about it now is the speaker, the Duchess, that reminds me of the crazy old lady in the park that feeds birds and shouts out random phrases. She presents these morals in the wrong context, so they are not recieved well by Alice. Actually, I doubt they are recieved at all. Alice is not focued on merely the moral. She is determined to find out the Who? What? Why? How? and When are you going to be quiet and leave me alone Dutchess? That is what is happening here, a miscommunication or misinterpretation between Alice and the Duchess. When you take away the rules and saftey of your old world it really discredits anything you were taught there in the first place.
I really liked reading this, I like the ideas that are being presented. I think you are right when you are saying that her encounter with the Duchess is somewhat irrelevent therefore teahing Alice a lesson about irrelevancy. Alice’s jerney is guided by several people and the Duchess could be seen as a detour in the jerney wich is why the encounter is breif, she has to get on with her jerney