By Angela Maria Hart
I adore "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" (as you may have guessed by now). These are two of my favorite literary pieces. Today, I wanted to address specific passages in the texts, "The Mouse's Tale" (sometimes known at "The Mouse's Tail") and "Jabberwocky."
If you read "Alice in Wonderland" in the near future, really pay attention to the literary beauty of these two passages.
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" & "Through the Looking-Glass" (Bantam Classics) on Amazon.
"The Mouse's Tale" by Lewis Carroll
The "Jabberwocky" Poem by Lewis Carroll
Fore more information on everything "Alice," I recommend, "The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition Hardcover" (November 17, 1999). It is available on Amazon.
One of the poems that Carroll included in the text is The Mouse’s Tale, which was relayed in Alice in Wonderland (Figure One). The Mouse offers to tell his tale to Alice, who was very interested at first. The Mouse replied, “Mine is a long and sad tale…It is a long tail, certainly” (Carroll 20). The first tale refers to his story, while the second tail is in reference to his actual physical tail, which all mice have. The words in the story are read as though they were a tail trailing behind a mouse as it moved. The Mouse’s Tale “is perhaps the best-known example in English of emblematic, or figured, verse: poems printed in such a way that they resemble something related to their subject matter. The affection goes back to ancient Greece” (Garner 34). Other writers who partake in creating similar pieces include George Herbert, Dylan Thomas, Robert Herrick, Stéphane Mallarmé, E.E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Guillaume Apollinaire (Garner 34).
Since Alice’s adventures are all a part of her dream, she imagines an actual mouse’s tail, which leads to the poem being printed in a twisted fashion. Alice’s misunderstanding of tail compared to tale demonstrates the larger disconnect between the world of Wonderland and Alice’s comprehension of her surroundings. Due to the words and circumstances in Wonderland constantly evolving, Alice cannot develop a baseline or precedent to work from. Similarly, the reader is constantly caught off guard with the story. Aside from the poem looking like a physical tail, it is also written in tale rhyme, which is a repetition of sounds (Garner 34). The story itself addresses how a dog tried to act as the judge, jury, and executioner for the Mouse.[1] This is foreshadowing the trial that Alice must attend due to the Queen charging her with absurd crimes. The Mouse holds a grudge against the dog, having unresolved feelings towards him for the unfair actions he took. The story is trying to convey that there should be fairness and justice in the world. Sadly, the story does not resonate with Alice, who is confused and bored by the Mouse. If she had listened to his tale, she may have avoided her own trial. The story’s structure forces a reader to pay close attention to the words Carroll used. There is a fluidity and musicality to the language allowing the reader to follow the story with ease. The break in the story, in this instance, simply draws the reader’s attention to enhance their understanding of Alice’s ongoing predicaments and lack of comprehension.
Similar to the removal of expectations, there are some instances in which Carroll draws the reader’s attention to grammar. Lacan believed, “such are the structural conditions that define grammar as the order of constitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the level of the unit immediately superior to the sentence, and lexicology as the order of constitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the verbal locution” (Lacan 742). The Mouse’s Tale is written in a unique format, tossing the regular grammar rules aside.
In novels, readers have come to expect a dialogue and scenes to be written in a certain format. Even the first novels adhered to certain standards to allow reader understanding.
In the poem, Jabberwocky is written in the book with inverted text, facing the opposite way, making it impossible for the reader to understand (Carroll 123) (Figure Two). Interestingly, Carroll wanted to invert every mention of the Jabberwocky, but later decided to only reverse this single passage (Garner 148). Charles Pierce believed that writing in this manner should be categorized as “art chirography,” which means, “the words formed so as to convey a visual impression of the poem’s ideas” (Garner 35). The reader becomes acutely aware of the fact everything is backwards in Looking Glass Land.
Humpty Dumpty adds context to the Jabberwocky poem chapters after it is first introduced providing context after the fact. In Alice Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice that the poem is made up of created words. For instance, he said, “That’s enough to begin with…there are plenty of hard words there. Brillig means four o’clock in the afternoon – the time when you begin broiling things for dinner…Slithy means lithe and slimy. “Lithe” is the same as “active.” You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed into one word” (Carroll 179).
The Jabberwocky poem may not have been written to make sense.[2] Considering the fact that Alice is in a dream, things can be nonsensical. Since seven years old, she may not have known how to construct a well-written poem, this the Jabberwocky poem, being a figment of her imagination, represents this lack of knowledge. Also, Carroll included made up words in Jabberwocky that were not intended to be comprehendible: beamish, brillig, bandersnatch, franjous, chortled, galumphing, mimsy, mome rath, slithy, snicker-snack, and tove are just a few of the nonsensical word choices.
[1] In Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, animals act as humans. Upon further analysis different animals may represent different races or countries of origin for people. Thus the Mouse hating dogs and cats may be representative of a minority fearing a world superpower; i.e. Nazis despising the Jews.
[2] Carroll only wrote the first stanza of Jabberwocky in Alice Through the Looking Glass, he wrote a longer poem for publication much later (Garner 148-149).
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