Through the Looking Glass IX -- chapter 7: THE ALICE MONSTER

1. 2 games: 1, the characters Nobody and Somebody; and 2, what's so clever about the Anglo-Saxon messengers' inclusion in Alice's impromptu "I Love My Love" beginning now with the typical A by an H?
2. We've seen before how Alice's words or wishes affect her surroundings.  Here the ham sandwich and hay; before the cakes and cordials.
3. The Lion and the Unicorn
4. The attitude of the Unicorn upon seeing and meeting the twice-as-natural-as-life Alice reminds me of a rather unfortunate trend I first noticed while living in Italy, but have since observed quite more than I'd like in the United States: that is parents having children (well, the impetus of the having is debatable, but the subsequent treating of them is not) not, in the Darwinian attitude, to carry on their line, but to flout as a fashion accessory, like taking a fancy dog for a walk, but only after tricking it out in fancy collar and gilt clothes.  The child becomes no more than a purse or a cell-phone, and is quite forgotten for being sentient and independently mobile.  Poor Alice!
5. The drums fail to drum out of town the two fighting monsters, but succeed in drumming out Alice.
6. (There is political repartee here in chapter 7, and you're welcome to bring it up if you like.)

Through the Looking Glass III -- chapter 1: SNOW DAY

1. The contrast between the kittens' colors leads to a short stack of fairly obvious observations of good and evil.  Is there more than this here?  Look at the kitten receiving the majority of Alice's attention; the behavior of the kitten compared to Alice's behavior (as she reports it); and never forget Carroll.
2. Remember what snow and winter classically represent.  Combine this with Carroll's separation from Alice and the fact that he very much enjoyed offering kisses to his child friends.  Additionally, notice how favorably Alice describes the snow, as well as the mentions of "blanket" and "sleep."  These allusions and metaphors, I think, describe perfectly Carroll's feelings of distance and loss for Alice.  (Potential aside: does Alice's playful threat to Kitty to shut it out in the snow play into this at all?)
3. Alice's mention of the bonfire preparations and the general time of year suggest Guy Fawkes Day is tomorrow, making today November 4, exactly 6 months after Alice in Wonderland.  This is augmented by a later mention that, while through the looking-glass, she is exactly seven-and-a-half years old.
4. Alice's play-maternal treatment of Kitty suggests that she is growing up.
5. "And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say...."  I don't recall if it happens again in Looking-Glass, but it never happened at all in Wonderland that Carroll employed first-person narration.  Why is it particularly fitting here and now?  It is also significant that this sentence hints at significant distance between the time of the storytelling and events it narrates.  (Later in this chapter, he employs a similar distancing: "She said afterward that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made....")
6. While Alice's sisters make regular appearances, albeit primarily via puns and jokes, they are all but removed from Looking-Glass, save this impersonal mention of Alice's practical sister.
7. (I just love this line: "Nurse!  Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena, and you're a bone!")
8. Mysterious things, dreams.  Duh, right?  If you go through chapter 1 and look carefully, there are a number of events, thoughts, and observations of and around Alice and her surroundings that suggest--or foreshadow--the "dream" to come.
9. Pay close attention (if you'd like; it's not always significant to our reading here) to reversals in the "other" house and of the "other" Alice, both through the looking-glass.  Interesting:  It was another Alice, a distant cousin of Carroll's in fact, who inspired the narrative reversals.  Carroll, visiting his uncle, came upon this other Alice and said, "So you are another Alice.  I'm very fond of Alices.  Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling," upon which they entered the home and Carroll pointed out the intrigues of looking in a mirror.  He gave her an orange and asked which hand it was in, then why it appeared in the other hand in her reflection.  She said, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?"
10. Tenniel's two illustrations of Alice passing through the looking-glass are meant to appear on opposite sides of the same page, to add to the appearance of Alice actually passing through the mirror.  Notice she is the only item not reversed or otherwise changed.  Even Tenniel's signature and the name "Dalziel" (the company which did the wood-cut engraving of Tenniel's illustrations) is reversed.
11. How easily Alice checkmates the White King, who, by all appearances, is now, though only temporarily, dead--or dead to her.
12. Notice the automatic writing of the King, controlled, as it were, by a virtual god--an almighty, invisible force.
13. Funny that holding "Jabberwocky" up to the mirror did little to make it more understandable.  (I'm not going into all the "definitions" of the non-/sense words in the poem, though I'm happy to answer questions, if there are any.)