Jury slate

The Jury slate is a small, handheld writing board used by the twelve jurors in the trial of the Knave of Hearts. It first appears when Alice, observing the court, notices that the jurors are all writing very busily on their slates before the trial has even begun. When she whispers to the Gryphon what they are doing, he replies that they are putting down their names, for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial. Alice calls this "Stupid things!" in a loud, indignant voice, and the White Rabbit immediately cries "Silence in the court!" The King puts on his spectacles and looks anxiously round to see who is talking. Alice can see, as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors are writing down "stupid things!" on their slates, and she can even make out that one of them does not know how to spell "stupid" and has to ask his neighbour to tell him. She thinks to herself, "A nice muddle their slates'll be in before the trial's over!"

The Slate as a Tool of Absurd Bureaucracy

One of the jurors has a pencil that squeaks, which Alice cannot stand, so she goes round the court, gets behind him, and very soon finds an opportunity of taking it away. She does it so quickly that the poor little juror—it is Bill, the Lizard—cannot make out at all what has become of it; after hunting all about for it, he is obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day, and this is of very little use, as it leaves no mark on the slate. The slate thus becomes a symbol of the court's pointless diligence: the jurors write down everything they hear, no matter how trivial or contradictory, and the physical limitations of the slate—its inability to hold a mark without a proper pencil—mirror the emptiness of the evidence they are recording. When the King tells the jury to write down the dates the Hatter gives for the beginning of his tea, the jury eagerly writes down all three dates on their slates, then adds them up and reduces the answer to shillings and pence, a perfect example of applying arithmetic to nonsense.

The Slate and the Collapse of Order

After Alice accidentally tips over the jury-box, upsetting all the jurymen onto the heads of the crowd below, the jury has to recover from the shock. As soon as their slates and pencils have been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seems too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court. The slate here becomes a tool for documenting the very chaos that has just occurred, as if writing it down will restore order. Later, when the King asks Alice what she knows about the business and she says "Nothing," the King turns to the jury, who are just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupts: "Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course." The King hastily agrees, and some of the jury write it down "important" and some "unimportant," a split that Alice can see because she is near enough to look over their slates, but she thinks it does not matter a bit. The slate thus becomes a record of the court's own confusion, where the same statement is recorded in opposite ways.

The Slate and the Queen's Tyranny

The Queen's arbitrary power is also registered through the slate. When the Queen furiously throws an inkstand at the Lizard, the unfortunate little Bill has left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark, but he now hastily begins again, using the ink that is trickling down his face, as long as it lasts. The slate, which should be a neutral tool for recording evidence, becomes a site of physical punishment and absurd perseverance. Finally, when Alice declares that she does not believe there is an atom of meaning in the verses, the jury all write down on their slates, "She doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it," but none of them attempt to explain the paper. The slate thus becomes a repository for the jury's inability to think, a place where they mechanically transcribe statements without understanding them, embodying the trial's complete failure to produce justice. The slate, like the court itself, is a device that records everything and understands nothing.