Through the Looking Glass XII -- chapters 9 - 12: The End

Chapter 9:

I'm not really sure how to approach this one; there's really not a whole lot to say about it.  Alice is Queen.  Carroll has said goodbye.  She takes her position gracefully (no stiff-neckedness here), and as things settle, so they fall apart.  The dream ends here, just like it did in the Tart Trial of Wonderland, and the only thing left to Carroll is to end the saga.  This is a very charitable finale, as he does so tenderly, and as he is no longer a part of it.  The chapter is rife with excellent jokes and wordplay, but there's a distance between reader and action, surely drawn--intentionally or not--by Carroll's own increasing distance from the growing Alice.  One detail I'm a big fan of, and regarding the relationship's terminus, is that he sends her off with fireworks!

By the way, I mentioned earlier that Carroll never wrote poetry in anapests.  Well, this chapter proves me wrong.


Chapters 10 and 11:

It was at the suggestion of another of Carroll's young friends that the Red Queen turn into the black kitten, Kitty.  Further, there's an article called "Alice Through the Zodiac," in which one Everett Bleiler points out how the twelve chapters align with signs of the zodiac, including the Tweedles as Gemini, the Goat on the train as Capricorn, and so on.  "True" Carrollians (a club to which I can't claim to be member, though not necessarily for this) believe Carroll simply wanted twelve chapters, as he never displayed interest in the Zodiac.

Chapter 12:

I'm interested by Kitty, the black kitten, who, like all cats, only says the same thing, *purr*, no matter what the conversation.  Of course this isn't any kind of a conversation; there must be contrast for dialog.  In my personal experience with children and teens (as a father and teacher, respectively), this isn't uncommon, especially when the kid in question is of one of the following three types (though, really, this goes equally for adults): obstinate of mood, an idiot, of extremely heightened emotion (very happy, very sad, very angry, etcetera).  I wonder who, if anyone, the little black kitten may be at this point.

Bearing in mind the fact that it was Carroll, not Alice, who wrote the book, as well as Carroll's relationship with and love for the girl, and whatever psychoses he may or may not have had toward her, what do you think of the "serious" question Alice posits to Kitty?

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 VII -- chapter 5: TRANSMOGRIFICATION

Chapter 5 is nearly as slippery as the subjects of its contents, but I think there are some patterns that emerge which lead to some likely insights.  The chapter is dominantly divided in two, with the first part a fairly innocuous discussion with the White Queen, and the second a combination of the sheep, the shop, and a stationary rowing expedition.

Nothing is solid or, more accurately, permanent in chapter 5; this impermanence is the foundation of any understanding to be had here.  Consider the following points:

• Jam, or treats (despite Alice's dislike of jam--or iam in Latin, which interchanges i and j, and means "now," but only in past and future tenses), are only available tomorrow or yesterday;
• there are tears in anticipation of an event, but once the event has happened, the emotions are spent;
• the crow is gone, and Alice's words support the acknowledgment of the crow as death omen by admitting a fear of nightfall (which nightfall indicates death in the introductory poem), now optimistically passed;
• Alice laments of Looking-Glass House's loneliness, which is interesting as Wonderland was not significantly more populace, but Looking-Glass certainly has a dense air of solitude;
• and finally, the White Queen (Carroll, perhaps) indicates that it is healthy, important, and even necessary to believe in impossible things, which is an uncharacteristically optimistic sentiment for this book, along with the fallacious belief that the threat of nightfall has passed (night and death are always coming).

*****

• Again, nothing remains the same, and all the less so now we're in this shop.  Nothing is found when you look for it: the toys and amusements always in the periphery and nothing directly before you; however, when Alice isn't looking, she is suddenly back in the boat again (I say "back . . . again" because this is exactly how the Alice books got started in the first place: in a boat, rowing) and with, of all things, an innocent, white sheep.  The river banks are not golden this go-'round, however, and they frown disconsolately, and still Alice is so lonely.
• Feathering is a rowing technique, which can be seen in use quite expertly in the movie The Social Network (no further connection between Alice and the film or filmmakers intended); to catch a crab was slang for extending the oar too deeply and it's subsequent "catching" in the water would often unseat the rower.
• Also the rushes, similar to the items in the store, are elusive, especially those that are the loveliest, which are also the farthest away; and regardless of the ease of picking or getting at them, once picked the rushes rapidly lose their beauty.  Beauty, of course, is just as elusive and ephemeral, both in its subject abstraction and its permanence, and, according to the text, the beauty of dreams all the more so; but Alice, despite and perhaps for her similarity to these rushes, doesn't notice, distracted as she is by everything else, their wilting.
• What do you make of the egg and the trees?

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.)