Sitting drowsily by a riverbank, a young girl named Alice catches sight of a waistcoat-wearing White Rabbit muttering about being late. Driven by curiosity, she follows him down a deep rabbit hole, tumbling into a subterranean world governed by its own absurd logic. Throughout her descent and subsequent wanderings, Alice shrinks and grows dramatically after consuming mysterious food and drink, leading to constant bewilderment about her identity and physical form. She navigates a succession of bizarre encounters, beginning with a pool of tears she weeps while towering nine feet tall, where she meets a soaked mouse and various birds.
Her journey leads her to a chaotic cottage where she briefly nurses a duchess's baby that transforms into a pig, and she receives baffling philosophical advice from a hookah-smoking caterpillar perched on a mushroom. Alice frequently finds herself bewildered by the inhabitants of Wonderland, whose conversations rely on aggressive wordplay, circular reasoning, and abrupt threats of execution. These eccentric interactions continue at a perpetual, maddening tea party hosted by the March Hare, the Hatter, and a perpetually sleeping dormouse, where time is permanently stuck at six o'clock.
Eventually, Alice gains entry into a lovely garden where the short-tempered Queen of Hearts presides over a chaotic croquet match played with live flamingos as mallets and hedgehogs as balls. The royal decrees for capital punishment ring out constantly, though executions rarely seem to be carried out. Along the way, she befriends a grinning Cheshire Cat and encounters the melancholic Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, who teach her peculiar dances and share tales of their strange underwater schooling.
The narrative culminates in a nonsensical courtroom trial concerning the theft of the Queen's tarts. The Hatter and the cook testify as reluctant witnesses before Alice herself is suddenly called to the stand. As she grows to an enormous size once more, she boldly denounces the court as nothing more than a pack of cards, prompting the entire assembly to rise up and attack her. Alice wakes up on the riverbank with her head in her sister's lap, realizing her extraordinary adventures were merely a vivid dream.
