Through The Looking Glass

Through the Looking-Glass runs on linguistic play. The most famous example is “The Jabberwocky,” a poem that appears in the first chapter of the novel and returns when Alice meets Humpty Dumpty. The poem tells the story of imaginary creatures like the Jabberwocky, the Bandersnatch, and the Jubjub bird using invented words (see full poem in Important Quotes). Despite the density of nonsense words, however, the poem still tells a comprehensible—and compelling—story about the Jabberwocky being slain in a mysterious wood by a young man with his “vorpal sword.” Humpty Dumpty gives Alice definitions for a few words, including “brillig” and “slithy,” but dictionary definitions are not necessary to understand the meaning or the mood the poem conveys. Carroll invents words that create the associations and feelings he wants to achieve by putting together sounds that either invoke existing words or convey their meaning through onomatopoeia. “Slithy,” for instance, incorporates sounds from “slimy” and “lithe,” while “snicker-snack” of the “vorpal blade” mimics the sound of a sword striking against scales or bone. “The Jabberwocky” draws attention to the way language creates meaning through intuition, context, and feeling as much as through the denotative meanings of words, particularly in the case of poetry.

The novel abounds with puns and riddles based on homophones. For instance, in the talking flowers’ garden, the Tiger-Lily tree barks “bough-wough,” a double pun: on the noun “bark” and the verb “bark”; and on the onomatopoeia for a dog’s bark, “bow-wow,” and “bough,” a word for a branch of a tree. The flowers tell Alice that the flower beds in her world are too soft for flowers to stay awake, a pun on the double meaning of “bed” as the place humans sleep and the spot of ground where flowers grow. The Red and White queens’ final examination of Alice confounds her with a flurry of puns:

‘How is bread made?’ ‘I know that!’ Alice cried eagerly. ‘You take some flour—’ ‘Where do you pick the flower?’ the White Queen asked. ‘In a garden or in the hedges?’ ‘Well, it isn’t picked at all,’ Alice explained: ‘it’s ground—’ ‘How many acres of ground?’ (183).

The nonsensicality of this conversation is rooted in a fundamental paradox of language that makes puns possible: The same sounds can mean different things. Homophones can create humor and fun but also present a challenge to children like Alice as they absorb the rules of communication.

On other occasions, Carroll calls attention to the nonsensicality of idiomatic phrases. When Alice says she sees nobody on the road, the king and his messengers are amazed she saw Nobody. It is impossible to see someone who is not there, so the phrase “I saw nobody” is logically nonsensical, even though its idiomatic meaning is clear. Similarly, when Alice says things like “I beg your pardon,” she is told not to beg. The Red Queen asks her to translate an English idiom into French in her examination of Alice: “‘Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’ ‘Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,’ Alice replied gravely. ‘Who ever said it was?’ said the Red Queen” (183). The Queen is asking Alice to connect an idiom from one language to an idiom from another, requiring a connotative rather than denominative approach to words, but she demands it in terms of denominative translation, confusing Alice.

These are only a few of the countless examples that showcase the theme of the exploration of language, wordplay, and meaning. Tracking every example would reproduce the novel almost line-by-line. Carroll’s play with language reveals that the nonsense Alice is confronted with in the looking-glass world is rooted in the very nature of language itself.