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Jabberwocky | Introduction

“Jabberwocky” is probably Carroll’s most well-known poem. It is the first of many nonsense poems set into the text of the beloved English novel Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1872, six years after the more commonly known Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Because the poem employs conventional structures of grammar and many familiar words, however, it is not “pure nonsense.” In fact, while both books were composed for the ten-year-old Alice Liddell, it is generally accepted that Carroll’s studies in logic firmly ground the thought beneath the imaginative works, so that adults find as much to appreciate in the novels and poetry as children. The importance of “Jabberwocky” as a central focus of meaning for the novel is indicated by Carroll’s intention that the drawing of the Jabberwock should appear as the title-page illustration for Through the Looking-Glass.

In the novel, Alice goes through a mirror into a room and world where things are peculiarly backward. She finds a book in a language she doesn’t know, and when she holds the book up to a mirror, or looking-glass, she is able to read “Jabberwocky,” a mock-heroic ballad in which the identical first and last four lines enclose five stanzas charting the progress of the hero: warning, setting off, meditation and preparation, conquest, and triumphant return. The four lines that open and close the poem were published originally in 1855 as Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. It is this stanza that Humpty Dumpty, whom Alice meets shortly after reading the poem, takes pains to explicate. While the meaning of the poem is obscured by its nonsense elements, and general interpretations widely vary, Humpty Dumpty’s explication is certainly much less helpful in discovering meaning in “Jabberwocky” than Alice’s initial response:

“Somehow it fills my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—”

Jabberwocky Summary

Lines 1–4: Carroll explicitly defined certain words when the first stanza of this poem was published as a poem in its own right as “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” He provided a glossary, or list of meanings, for some of the unfamiliar words; this list was later incorporated into Humpty Dumpty’s explica- tion in Alice in Wonderland. The first line begins with the now archaic English contraction for “It was” and contains the noun “brillig” which Carroll says comes from the broiling or grilling done in the early evening (br + ill + i[n]g) in preparation for dinner. “Toves” are supposedly badger-like creatures, and the adjective “slithy” is a portmanteau made up of “lithe” and “slimy.” The definition offered for “gyre” in the second line is “to scratch”; “gimble” is defined as “to bore holes.” Carroll has directed us to pronounce these both with a hard “g.” However, in American English “gyre” is pronounced with the soft sound of the “j” in “june.” Furthermore, “gyre” as a noun in its own right means “to circle,” so it makes sense that its use as a verb might have that same meaning. “Gimble” is said to be associated with the noun “gimlet,” “a small tool for boring holes.” “Wabe” is defined by Carroll as “the side of a hill,” but the explanation proposed by Alice as a portmanteau of “way + before/ behind” seems much more helpful. Thus, the line can be read, quite poetically, as “Did spin and spike in the way beyond.” The second line ends with a semi-colon in some versions of the poem, but with a colon in the last version edited by Carroll. A semi-colon would indicate a lesser break than a period, establishing two independent thoughts connected into one sentence. A colon suggests a further amplification of, or elaboration on, what has already been said, and in fact in this case the colon might stand for a break plus the word “however”: “It was evening and the toves were having a great time [; however,] the borogoves weren’t very happy and the raths felt so bad they cried.” “Mimsy” in line 3 is made up of “flimsy” and “miserable,” and the “borogoves” which it describes are said to be parrots. The “raths” of line 4 are defined as turtles, and Carroll offers an interesting etymology, or word history, for the adjective “mome” as being related to “solemn,” which he suggests comes from an earlier (imaginary) word “solemome.” The verb that ends the stanza is said to derive from a word meaning “to shriek,” although Humpty Dumpty is more explicit, indicating that it is something “between bellowing and whistling,” which suggests a sobbing, crying kind of sound, and which coupled with the sound of “outgrabe,” perhaps might come close to being a past tense form for “outgrieve,” or “grieve out[loud].” Carroll’s original intention of the alliteration of the hard “g” for “gyre” and “gimble” in line 2 is lost with the American pronunciation of the soft “j” beginning “gyre.” However, the assonance between the vowel sounds in “slithy” and “gyre” in lines 1 and 2 remains to emphasize the musicality of the poem, as does the assonance of the short “i” in “brillig,” “gimble,” and “mimsy” in lines 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and the long “o” sounds in “borogoves” and “mome” in lines 3 and 4. The stanza containing lines 1–4 establishes the setting for the story about to be told. Carroll has offered a literal English translation of the passage:

It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill-side: all unhappy were the parrots; and the grave turtles squeaked out. There were probably sun-dials on the top of the hill, and the “borogoves” were afraid that their nests would be undermined. The hill was probably full of the nests of “raths,” which ran out, squeaking with fear, on hearing the “toves” scratching outside. This is an obscure, but deeply-affecting, relic of ancient Poetry.

The first two lines set a scene of lighthearted happiness in which all seems well, but the last two hint at impending doom.

Lines 5–8: The first proper noun in this stanza is related to the title of the poem itself, and so bears some serious consideration in both its form as the thing, the “Jabberwock,” and the activity of the thing, “Jabberwocky.” The first part of either word is “jabber,” and a synonym for this is “babble,” a word that brings up immediately an association with the biblical tower erected in the city of Babel. “Babble” thus refers to the sounds that resulted from God’s confusion of the supposed one original human language into many so that people could no longer understand each other and cooperate to build the tower to heaven. “-Wock” or “-wocky” may refer to an old Scottish word for “voice.” Hence, the “Jabberwock” could be called a “Babble-Voice,” and “Jabberwocky” might be “Babblement.” The central idea is that a father is warning his son against a creature whose sounds are without meaning.

The father’s warning becomes explicit in the sixth line about the dangers inherent in the Jabberwock’s jaws and claws. In the seventh line he extends the warning to include a second important creature: the Jubjub bird. Since sound is such a significant feature of this poem, it seems justified to take the sound of “jubjub” as being close to the word “jujube,” a candy named for a fruit tree, and to assume an association with the sticky sweetness of the fruit the bird eats. Furthermore, in Carroll’s later book-length poem The Hunting of the Snark it is made clear that the... » Complete Jabberwocky Summary