Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet ground in her life: it was all ridges
     and furrows: the croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingoes, and the
     soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the
     arches. . .

     The players all played at once, without waiting for turns, quarreling all the while, and fighting
     for the hedgehogs, and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went
     stamping about, and shouting 'Off with his head ! ' or 'Off with her head!', about once a
     minute. (p. 67)

This passage from Alice in Wonderland perfectly illustrates why Alice's adventures are true
Fantasy. The relationship between the mad croquet game in the world of the Red Queen and a
normal croquet game in Alice's world in many ways parallels the relationship between Fantasy and
Reality. According to Eric Rabkin, (Quoted by George P. Landow in the web) Fantasies may be
generally distinguished from other narratives by this: the very nature of the ground rules, of how
we know things . . . the problem of knowing infects Fantasies on all levels, in their settings, in their
methods, in their characters . The very nature of the ground rules at the Queen's croquet party is
strange indeed, totally unlike anything Alice or any other dweller in the world of Reality has ever
seen. In fact, Alice cannot ÒknowÓ the rules of the game, or of the country at all, no matter how
she tries, for to her they appear to be utterly arbitrary and inconstant. The characters also keep
Alice firmly planted in the fantastic. The people she encounters are talking animals, mythical
beasts, and playing cards who follow a code of conduct unique to their homeland and totally
foreign to Alice. The Queen is fond of sentencing her subjects to death for no particular reason,
and (although not at the croquet party) babies turn into pigs, cats disappear but leave their smiles
behind.

The Queen's party is a perfect summary of the way in which unusual settings, methods, and
characters in this strange kingdom are what set Alice in Wonderland so sharply apart from
realistic modes, and what make it the epitome of fantasy.