Five-minute digest
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Summary
Through the Looking-Glass is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. On a snowy afternoon, the day before a bonfire she hopes to see, Alice sits by the fire scolding her black kitten, wonders what the room behind the drawing-room mirror is like, climbs onto the mantelpiece and passes through the glass. In Looking-Glass House the chessmen are alive: she lifts the White King and Queen onto the table, unseen and terrifying to them, and finds a book whose poem, Jabberwocky, she can read only by holding it to a mirror. Outside, every path leads her back to the house until she walks away from her goal. In the Garden of Live Flowers the Tiger-lily and the Rose talk rudely to her, and she meets the Red Queen, who shows her that the whole country is laid out like a great chessboard, divided by brooks and hedges. Alice is made the White Queen's Pawn, and if she reaches the Eighth Square she will be a queen. The Red Queen runs her breathlessly fast only to keep in the same place. As she crosses each brook Alice moves a square: she rides a train with a Gnat who tells her about Looking-Glass insects; walks through a wood where things have no names, arm in arm with a Fawn until it remembers it is a Fawn and she a human child; and meets the fat twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who recite The Walrus and the Carpenter, show her the snoring Red King, and tell her she is only a thing in his dream. The White Queen, who lives backwards, screams before she pricks her finger and tells Alice she can believe six impossible things before breakfast; she turns into a Sheep keeping a shop, and the shop becomes a rowing boat and then a shop again. Humpty Dumpty, sitting on a wall, explains that words mean what he chooses, interprets Jabberwocky, and falls with a crash. The Lion and the Unicorn fight for the crown, and Alice serves plum-cake the looking-glass way, handing it round first and cutting it afterwards. The gentle, inventive White Knight rescues her from the Red Knight, falls off his horse again and again, and sings her a song before she crosses the last brook and finds a golden crown on her head. As Queen Alice she is examined by the Red and White Queens and guests at her own feast, where the leg of mutton is introduced to her and the dishes and guests run wild. She seizes the Red Queen and shakes her, and the Queen turns into the black kitten. Awake, Alice wonders whether it was her dream or the Red King's. Macmillan published the book in December 1871 with title-page date 1872 and fifty illustrations by John Tenniel; it ends with an acrostic poem spelling Alice Pleasance Liddell.
Top Lessons
Words keep their meanings
Humpty Dumpty says a word means just what he chooses, and that the question is which is to be master. Alice doubts that words can be made to mean so many things. The scene shows that conversation depends on words having shared meanings no single speaker owns.
Growing up, one square at a time
Alice begins as a Pawn and must cross square after square, meeting strange and difficult people, to become a Queen. When she is crowned she finds that being a Queen means taking charge, and at the feast she does. The journey is a gentle picture of growing up through steady patience.
Kindness in a contrary world
Most of the creatures Alice meets are rude, bossy or contrary, but the White Knight is kind and wants nothing but to see her safely on. Alice waves her handkerchief to him as he rides away. The book shows how one gentle person stands out among proud ones.
Is it a dream?
The twins tell Alice she is only a thing in the Red King's dream, and the last chapter asks which dreamed it. The book plays with a real puzzle about what is real and leaves it, smiling, for the reader.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.”
Frequently cited
“If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Frequently cited
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.’”
Frequently cited
“The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”
Frequently cited
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Frequently cited
“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“which is to be master—that’s all.”
“Life, what is it but a dream?”
Medical Lens
The book is a dream-fantasy without medical content as such, but its play with sleep, memory and sensation has interested writers on the mind. The Red King sleeps throughout and the twins insist Alice exists only in his dream; the last chapter asks which of them dreamed it. The White Queen remembers things that happen the week after next and screams in pain before pricking her finger, then is calm afterward, a comic reversal of cause, feeling and memory. In the wood where things have no names Alice briefly cannot remember her own name. These episodes are logical and literary games, and reading them as descriptions of a neurological disorder would go beyond the text.
- Chapter III
In the wood where things have no names, Alice forgets her own name and the Fawn forgets what it is.
- Chapter IV
Tweedledum and Tweedledee show Alice the snoring Red King and tell her she is only a sort of thing in his dream.
- Chapter V
The White Queen's memory works both ways; she bandages and screams over her finger before the brooch pricks it.
- Chapter XII
Awake, Alice asks the kitten which of them dreamed it, herself or the Red King.