by Jenn Hughes

Created on: May 13, 2009

Lewis Carroll, hanging out in his study with relatives in Sunderland, England was working on a novel to amuse his family. Later, the book would become known as Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There, but for the meantime, Lewis was in need of a poem. His heroine Alice had already made her way through the mirror into Looking Glass land, and he needed a way to orient her to her backwards surroundings. His real thought was to educate on how to not write a poem, and from that idea came the rhyming of nonce words and portmanteau that eventually evolved into Jabberwocky.

Remember that the poem appears at the point in the book where Alice is in the Looking-Glass house and has just rescued Lily the white pawn. She puzzles a great deal over the book she finds there, until she realizes it is a Looking Glass book, and must read in a glass. Originally, it read:

YKCOWREBBAJ

sevot yhtils eht dna gillirb sawT

And on et cetera.

Once held to the glass, it of course became the famous:

JABBERWOCKY

Twas brillig and the slithy toves

And goes on to describe the slaying of the Jabberwock, in a poetry style that would have been badly frowned upon at the time. Granted, the point was how not to write a poem, but also, since all of Alice was meant to entertain children, some gruesome monster had to appear somewhere for appropriate slaying. A fairy tale just wouldn't be the same without it.

Why our friend Lewis chose to call his monster the "Jabberwock" is a matter for some debate. Clearly it is some sort of dragon or griffin, and quite a silly name for such an evil monster it is. Possibly it was chosen to soften the battle scene for young ears. A bit like "Puff, the Magic Dragon" perhaps.

But Jabberwocky was important to Lewis. Later in the story, Alice asks language expert Humpty Dumpty to explain the poem to her. He manages quite well through the first stanza, but then wants to know "who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you." He never does get to an explanation of Jabberwocky itself.

Since the publication and popularity of Alice in Wonderland" several of the words of the poem, including the title, Jabberwocky, have entered the English language as acceptable grammar. Jabberwocky itself has come to refer to nonsense language.

So, one could conclude that Lewis needed a pleasant nonsense word for a rather grim piece of nonsense that was merely intended to demonstrate how not to write poetry.

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