Student Question
What are the main events of "Jabberwocky," and what is unusual about its language? Discuss two nonsensical words that make sense. What poetic form is parodied?
Quick answer:
Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" is a mock Anglo-Saxon heroic poem that tells the story of a young warrior killing the Jabberwock and bringing home its head as a trophy. Carroll includes many nonsense words that still invoke images in readers' minds by the association of sound and sense and by their similarity with known words.
The first impression many people receive from Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" is one of confusion. This is a legitimate reaction, for by its nonsense words and strange images, the poem is meant to stimulate our imaginations in ways that most poems do not.
Let's look first at the story of "Jabberwocky." The first stanza gives us a setting. In the second stanza, someone is speaking—perhaps an older man, because he calls the person to whom he is talking "my son" (line 5). The speaker provides a warning: "Beware the Jabberwock" (line 5) and the "Jubjub bird" (line 7) and "shun / The frumious Bandersnatch!" (lines 7–8). We don't know what these creatures are, of course, but they sound dangerous, and the speaker certainly thinks so.
Nonetheless, the hero goes out to meet the Jabberwock, sword in hand. He does not find the creature at first and stops...
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to think when all of a sudden, there it is! "The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, / Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, / And burbled as it came!" (lines 14–16). The hero is up for the challenge, however, and he kills the Jabberwock and cuts off its head. He brings the head, his trophy, back to the one who warned him and receives the latter's joyous praise.
Even though we can follow the story of "Jabberwocky," its language might just stump us, and it's supposed to! We've never heard of many of the poem's words before, because Carroll simply made them up. Yet in an odd way, these nonsense words do make some sense to us, or they at least spark images in our minds. Why? Over the years, some scholars have argued that there is a correspondence between the sounds of words and their meanings—that human beings instinctively associate certain sounds with certain images. Think, for instance, how many words starting with gl are associated shimmering or sparkling: glimmer, glitter, glisten, etc. Coincidence? Some scholars think not.
Perhaps this sound–sense correspondence helps us, at least in part, get some idea of the meaning of Carroll's nonsense words. How about "uffish" in line 13? What does that sound like to you? Perhaps it reminds you of the sound you make when you are tired and fall into a chair or when you sit down too quickly on a hard surface. "Uff!" So what is "uffish" thought then? Maybe it is thought that doesn't mean much more than your exclamation. Maybe the hero is brave but not altogether bright.
We also find clues to the meanings of Carroll's nonsense words when they sound rather similar to words we already know. Look at the word "brillig" in line 1. We might recall the word "brilliant" when we see "brillig" and get the idea that the latter means bright and shiny. How about the word "frabjous" in line 23? It sounds kind of like "fabulous" and "joyous" combined, so we can at least guess that "frabjous" is a highly positive word with a similar meaning.
Why did Carroll write a poem like "Jabberwocky"? Apparently, he was trying to create a parody of an Anglo-Saxon heroic poem. In fact, the first stanza of "Jabberwocky" was published as "A Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry" in Carroll's magazine Misch-Masch. Of course, there are no actual Anglo-Saxon (Old English) words in that stanza, for Carroll did not know Anglo-Saxon, but it does feel a little like Anglo-Saxon poetry. Then, at some point, Carroll decided to expand the stanza with a mock heroic story of a warrior going out to kill a monster and bringing back its head in triumph (a bit like Beowulf bringing back the head of Grendel as a trophy after he kills Grendel's mother).
Indeed, "Jabberwocky" is unlike most poems we will ever read, but if we put in just a bit of time and effort, we might find that, even for all its nonsense, we enjoy Carroll's creation.
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