This is my first time reading this book, but of course like everyone else I'm familiar with it through cultural osmosis. When I was in school, we were taken to see a local play based on Through the Looking Glass.
Also, whenever a studio is making a movie about Alice in Wonderland, it's quite common to include elements from Through the Looking. For example, the famous 1951 Disney movie contained some elements (the scene with the flowers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, The Walrus and the Carpenter) that are actually from Through the Looking Glass.
Why I Read This Book
To be honest, the main reason I read this book was just to check another classic off of my list. I had read the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland back in 2011, but never got around to the sequel.
I was in the bookstore once, and I saw a book called "The Annotated Alice" (W), which has extensive margin notes explaining everything. I regret to say I didn't buy it. But if I ever read this book again, I think I should get the annotated version.
...but, I've since decided that when you live abroad, you can't be picky about which edition you read--you just have to grab the books in whatever form you find them. But maybe someday in the future, I'll re-read both of these books with annotations, if I can find a suitable edition.
Plot Summary (Spoilers)
This is much the same style of story as the first book. Alice enters a magical land in which nothing makes sense, and all the creatures talk in riddles.
There are a few differences. Since Alice has gone "through the looking glass", there are some references to everything being backwards in looking-glass-land.
There's also a chess theme going on in this book. Alice has to get across a giant chessboard in order to become a queen. The chessboard is actually the countryside, which has been divided up into a grid by rivers and hedges.
Various chess pieces (kings, queens, knights, pawns) figure as characters.
There's also a nursery rhyme theme going on throughout this book. Alice encounters characters and situations from nursery rhymes: Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, The Lion and the Unicorn. In each situation, Alice knows what is going to happen to the characters because she already knows the nursery rhyme, so she watches in wonder as the illogical events of the rhyme are enacted out right in front of her.
[Sidenote: I hadn't actually realized Tweedledee and Tweedledum come from an old nursery rhyme. I had thought they were a Lewis Carroll invention, but they actually do come from a nursery rhyme (W). The Lion and the Unicorn is, I think, much more well-known in England than in the United States. At any rate, I never heard of it until I became an adult. Perhaps the Tweedledee and Tweedledum nursery rhyme is also better known in England?]
Like the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, this second adventure is also only a dream. But Through the Looking-Glass leans much heavier into the surrealism of dreams. Alice will suddenly change locations and surroundings with no clue as to how she got there. (One moment she's in a field, then the next moment she's on a train, then she's suddenly in the forest). And characters will suddenly morph into different characters in front of her. (A queen will suddenly change into a sheep, etc). So there's not much of a coherent narrative in this book, but there are a lot of little episodes that can be fun.
The Reading Experience
Okay, confession time. I've never really liked the "It's all a crazy dream and nothing makes sense" elements of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. (As I mentioned in - both of my reviews of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.) Perhaps I'm just not the ideal reader for these books.
But in spite of this, I found Through the Looking Glass to be a very quick and painless read. Because the story jumps randomly from one situation to another, it's perfect for those of us with short attention spans. (It actually seems quite modern in that regard--almost like a TV sketch show which keeps cutting from one situation to another.)
The original illustrations by John Tenniel also help a lot. They really help to make the scenes jump out at the reader.
From page 193 in my edition. There's a picture like this every couple of pages, which really makes the story come alive.
I'm not sure this book is my favorite thing ever, but on the whole I found it a painless reading experience.
Also, reading Lewis Carroll is like reading Shakespeare, in the sense that you're constantly like, "Oh, so that's where that quote comes from!"
1) the poem Jabberwocky (W), which is nowadays considered a famous poem in its own right, but is originally part of Through the Looking-Glass. Linguistic textbooks are fond of using this poem as an example of how English syntax can be used with completely meaningless words.
2) Humpty Dumpty, when talking to Alice, asserts that when he speaks, the words he uses mean whatever he wants them to mean. This is frequently quoted in linguistic textbooks when discussing semantics
Extended Quotation
“Then I hope your finger is better now?” Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.
“Oh, much better!” cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went on. “Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!” The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn’t make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Alice said, very gently. “I should like to look all round me first, if I might.”
“You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,” said the Sheep: “but you can’t look all round you—unless you’ve got eyes at the back of your head.”
But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
“Things flow about so here!” she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. “And this one is the most provoking of all—but I’ll tell you what—” she added, as a sudden thought struck her, “I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!”
But even this plan failed: the “thing” went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.
“Are you a child or a teetotum?” the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles. “You’ll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.” She was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn’t help looking at her in great astonishment.
*********ENDQUOTE From Chapter 5, pages 167-168 in my edition****
This is a good example of how the book has a surreal dream-like quality. If you like this kind of stuff, there's lots more. If you don't like this kind of stuff, consider yourself warned ahead of time.
External Links
After reading this book, I checked the Wikipedia page. From which I learned:
The White Queen offers to hire Alice as her lady's maid and to pay her "twopence a week, and jam every other day." Alice says that she doesn't want any jam today, to which the Queen replies, "you couldn't have it if you did want it. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day." This is a reference to the rule in Latin that the word iam or jam—which means now, in the sense of already or at that time—cannot be used to describe now in the present, which is nunc in Latin. Therefore, "jam" is never available today.[7] This exchange is also a demonstration of the logical fallacy of equivocation.[8]
Well, that went right over my head. (I obviously don't remember my schoolboy Latin very well). There are probably a lot of references like that in this book that went right over my head. I really need to read "The Annotated Alice" one of these days.
6 out of 10 stars I'm giving it a low rating because I'm a philistine. Someone who loves all the wordplay and whimsy in this book would no doubt rate it higher. But It was easy and painless to read, and funny at parts, so it easily gets a 6 from me.
No comments:
Post a Comment