Through the Looking Glass X -- chapter 8: FAREWELL, WHITE KNIGHT

1. "I've a great mind to go and wake [the Red King], and see what happens," says Alice, shortly after a very Inception-like moment.  What's important here, I think, is Alice's acknowledgment that she hopes it's her dream, not the King's.
2. While Carroll is fairly transparently present in the Red King, he is even more obviously embodied in the White Knight, which, by all evidence, was an intentional characterization by Carroll (from Martin Gardner's notes): "Jeffrey Stern, in his article 'Carroll Identifies Himself at Last' (Jabberwocky, Summer/Autumn 1990), describes a game board hand-drawn by Carroll that was recently discovered.  The nature of the frame is unknown, but on the underside of the cardboard sheet Carroll had written 'Olive Butler, from the White Knight.  Nov. 21, 1892.'  'So, at last,' Stern comments, 'we know for certain the Carroll did portray himself as the White Knight.'"
3. It makes sense to ask, if this is indeed a game of chess being played out, who it is controlling the pieces.  Is it the Red King who is dreaming it?  Is it a meeting of two dreams--that of Alice, who is here a white pawn, together with that of the Red King, and therefor representing indeed the two sides of the board?  Well, the puppet-like, Punch-and-Judy behavior of the Red and White Knights may indicate otherwise--that there is indeed but one player--one puppet master--playing for both sides.  How, if at all, does this play against Alice's hope for this to be her dream?  Consider also that while Wonderland was written specifically for Alice Liddell, Looking-Glass bears more indicators that it was composed for reasons personal to Carroll.
4. What significance is there to the White Knight's escorting Alice to assume her queen-ship?
5. Aside from the "proof" of Jeffrey Stern, what more immediate, though more circumstantial, evidence is there to indicate Carroll's caricature in the White Knight?  Along these lines, and essentially invisible by reading the text alone, Carroll was something of an amateur inventor; also, contrast the White Knights treatment of Alice against her treatment at the hands of pretty much all of the other characters in the two books.
6. A.A. Milne (1952) suggests that the horse's ankle spikes inspired "The Hunting of the Snark," as the Knight intends them "to guard against the bites of sharks," and so "the compositor in his first proof made the very easy substitution of an 'n' for an 'h', and set Carroll wondering what the bites of snarks were like ... wondering until inevitably The Hunting of the Snark followed, which is the way such things get written."
7. A further suggestion that the White Knight is the true master of Looking-Glass House is the load of his pack and horse, which recall a variety of moments throughout the two books.  Can you spot and identify them?
8. "Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly."
9. It's possible that the old man on the gate is a reflection--and unforgettable by him--of the White Knight, who, of course, is a reflection--and unforgettable by Alice--of Lewis Carroll.
10. "...but you didn't cry so much as I thought you would."  This chapter, also the longest, is, I think, reflective (like so many other things within and, by nature of its title, without it) of the underlying tone of the whole book, as put by Donald Rackin: that of "a love between a child all potential, freedom, flux, and growing up and a man all impotence, imprisonment, stasis, and falling down."  And when she finally leaves him, not so sad as he might have hoped, and even perhaps free of him, she is a queen.

Before moving on to chapter 9, we will examine the episode "The Wasp in a Wig."

Through the Looking Glass VI -- chapter 4: BLACK BIRD

The first half of Chapter 4 (to the completion of Dee's recitation) manages a balance of true nonsense for nonsense's sake ("The Walrus and the Carpenter," for example, though I think there's yet some revelatory nuggets here anyway) and what I believe to be truly symbolic, either as intended by Carroll or as subconscious manifestation.

What are your thoughts regarding:

• the music from the tree, which starts when Alice and the Tweedles begin their brief dance and ends abruptly upon their finishing;
• Alice's narration of her story to her sister;
• "The Walrus and the Carpenter":

– There is evidence that Carroll intended no symbolism whatsoeverby this poem, and despite uncounted readers' attempts, and that it’s indeed complete nonsense, for Carroll left the choice of the second character to Tenniel, based upon the latter's preference in drawing, betwixt a carpenter, a butterfly, and a baronet.

– (from Roger Green, via Martin Gardner) The operetta Alice, by Savile Clarke extends the ending of the poem with an additional stanza, thus:

        The Carpenter he ceased to sob;

                The Walrus ceased to weep;

        They’d finished all the oysters;

                And they laid them down to sleep—

        And of their craft and cruelty

                The punishment to reap.

        —at which point the ghosts of two oysters return and dance upon the chests of the gluttons.  According to Gardner “Carroll felt, and apparently audiences agreed with him, that this provided a more effective ending for the episode and also somewhat mollified oysters sympathizers among the spectators.”

The second half of the chapter is significantly darker, even if you are an oyster sympathizer.

1. Which is Alice more justified to "like": the Walrus, who felt sorry for the oysters; or the Carpenter, who ate fewer of them?
2. The Red King is Carroll.  Defend.
3. Dee and Dum are mirror opposites (enantiomorphs; examine Tenniel's illustration of Alice preparing the brothers for combat.  Except for the accoutrement, they are indeed mirror images of each other).  If one stood before a mirror, he would not see himself (so to speak), but his brother.  As we're dealing with reflections, what do you think of someone battling with his/her own reflection?
4. This chapter opens with a famous nursery rhyme, which turns out in the end of the chapter to be prophetic--i.e. the crow actually comes.  Does Carroll, perhaps passively, hope that his writing might be similarly prophetic?  Does he have any such hope?
5. Interesting bit of double symbolism with the crow: first, consider the quotation from Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, below; second, the fact that in 585 B.C. the war between King Alyattes of Lydia and King Cyaxares of Medes ended--or was interrupted--by a total eclipse of the sun.  Tangentially, is there a connection between Alice's taking refuge under a tree and the somehow-avoidance of dark and death?

From Tortilla Flat:

        Where is Danny?  Lonely as smoke on a clear cold night, he drifts through Monterey in the evening.  To the post-office he goes, to the station, to the pool rooms on Alvarado Street, to the wharf where the black water mourns among the piles.  What is it, Danny?  What makes you feel this way?  Danny didn’t know.  There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was a vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn.  He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him.  He walked by Madam Zuca’s great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows.  Back to the wharf he went.  He leaned over the rail and looked into the deep, deep water.  Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods?  Do you see the procession of your days in the oily water among the piles?  He remained motionless, staring down.

        They were worried about him at Danny’s house, when it began to get dark.  The friends left the party and trotted down the hill into Monterey.  They asked, “Have you seen Danny?”

        “Yes, Danny walked by here an hour ago.  He walked slow.”

        Pilon and Pablo hunted together.  They traced their friend over the route he had followed, and at last they saw him, on the end of the dark pier.  He was lighted by a dim electric wharf light.  They hurried out to him.

        Pablo did not mention it then, but ever afterwards it was his custom, when Danny was mentioned, to describe what he saw as he and Pilon walked out on the wharf toward Danny.  “There he stood,” Pablo always said.  “I could just see him, leaning on the rail.  I looked at him, and then I saw something else.  At first it looked like a black cloud in the air over Danny’s head.  And then I saw it was a big black bird, as big as a man.  It hung in the air like a hawk over a rabbit hole.  I crossed myself and said two Hail Marys.  The bird was gone when we came to Danny.”

*

The Tweedles always frightened me more than anything else in the two books when I was a kid.