Why did Alice wish she could shut up like a telescope in Down the Rabbit-Hole by Lewis Carroll?

Answer 1

Alice wishes she could "shut up like a telescope" because she is feeling confused and overwhelmed by the strange things happening to her. She longs for simplicity and certainty, hoping that by shrinking in size like a telescope, she can control her experience and make sense of her surroundings.

Answer 2

Alice wishes she could shut up like a telescope in the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which is called Down the Rabbit-Hole. She has found the little door that leads to the beautiful garden and wants to go there, but is too large to get through the door, so she wishes she could shrink enough to fit through.

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; 'and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, 'it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.