Jabberwocky: Defining A Word

Defining a Word

The art of creating portmanteaux has been mastered by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky." In this mock-heroic ballad filled with beasts and bravery, Carroll weaves not only an enjoyable yarn, but forges new words to describe the illogical world he has created. Although the ballad is simply told, Carroll enriches this poem about heroism by creating a world utilizing such literary devices as diction, imagery, and theme.

In Through the Looking Glass, 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." In the book, the character of Humpty Dumpty gives definitions for the portmanteaux in the first stanza. In later writings, Lewis Carroll explained several of the others. The rest of the portmanteaux were never explicitly defined by Carroll (who even claimed that he did not know what some of them meant). Although Carroll was a mathematical logician, his poems and stories were frequently very illogical and often satirical in nature. This explains why so many of the words in "Jabberwocky" seem unintelligible. Carroll is simply creating new words by combining other old words (a portmanteau). This lends to the ridiculous diction found in the poem, which none the less creates splendid mental imagery.

Even though many of the words in "Jabberwocky" are unfamiliar, they still conjure powerful mental images of what they mean. Alice's response to Humpty Dumpty's explications, "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--" (Carroll, Through the Looking Glass 132) speaks to this end. The unnamed hero in "Jabberwocky" is told by his father, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! / The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" (Carroll "Jabberwocky" line 6) Biting jaws and catching claws clearly establish the Jabberwock as something to be feared. "The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, / Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, / And burbled as it came!" (Carroll 14) also instills a sense of impending danger. The initial stanza is repeated at the end of the poem, both setting the scene for this upside down forest and establishing that although a great deed was done, nothing has actually changed in the world.

All the meticulous details surrounding the forest and the Jabberwock help the poem to establish a clear theme. The identical first and last four lines enclose five stanzas charting the progress of the hero: warning (second stanza), setting off (third staza), meditation and preparation (fourth stanza), conquest (fifth stanza), and triumphant return (sixth stanza). The reader immediately understands the task is not an

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