Alice and Oliver are both caught up in a sequence of situations where everyone around them is at best arbitrary and irrational and at worst dangerously insane. Alice is a stronger and more positive character than Oliver, largely because she has the confidence that comes from belonging to a higher social class and being certain of her place in the world. This never deserts her, even when she is no longer in the world where she occupies that place. However, both children act as comparatively rational foils to the anarchy that surrounds them.

Ironically, it is Oliver's experiences in the real world that seem more inverted and irrational than those of Alice in Wonderland. Oliver has to join a gang of pickpockets (even if he does not realize this is what he is doing) to find the warmth and community denied him by respectable society. Fagin is not an attractive character, but he provides a better home for Oliver than Mr. Bumble or Mr. Sowerberry. Oliver is treated like a criminal until he actually becomes one, a greater paradox than any that Alice encounters.

Although Oliver does not have Alice's self-confidence, he does stand up for himself and says what he thinks when confronted with the tyranny of the adult world. Even the reception of his famous request for more gruel does not prevent him from protesting in the strongest terms against being indentured to Mr. Gamfield or retaliating against the taunts of Noah Claypole. Alice is even more cavalier in her attitude towards the characters she meets in Wonderland, whom she never seems to regard as adults at all and never has to take seriously, even when they threaten to chop off her head.