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.
- Which is Alice more justified to "like": the Walrus, who felt sorry for the oysters; or the Carpenter, who ate fewer of them?
- The Red King is Carroll. Defend.
- 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?
- 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?
- 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.
