Which character repeatedly falls asleep during the tea party?

The Dormouse repeatedly falls asleep during the tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Dormouse sits between the Mad Hatter and the March Hare in Chapter 7, “A Mad Tea-Party.” When Alice arrives, the Dormouse is already asleep, and the Hatter and March Hare use him as a cushion. He wakes intermittently, contributes fragments to the conversation, and repeatedly drifts back to sleep.

His sleepiness is part of the scene’s escalating nonsense. The Hatter and March Hare keep interrupting him, put him into a teapot, and ask him to tell a story. The Dormouse responds with the strange tale of three sisters who live in a treacle well and draw things beginning with the letter M.

The Dormouse is sometimes confused with the Hatter because the Hatter dominates adaptations and popular imagery. In the original novel, however, the Hatter is the tea party’s argumentative host, while the Dormouse is the drowsy storyteller. The real dormouse is also a small nocturnal rodent known for long periods of dormancy, making Carroll’s choice of animal especially fitting.