Summary Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass

Author	Lewis Carroll
Illustrator	Modern Illustrated Classics-91
Country	Delhi
Language	English
Genre	Children's fiction
Publisher	Rohan Book Company
Publication date	2003

Characters

Main characters

Alice Bandersnatch Haigha (March Hare) Hatta (The Hatter) Humpty Dumpty The Jabberwock Jubjub Bird Red King

Red Queen The Lion and the Unicorn The Sheep The Walrus and the Carpenter Tweedledum and Tweedledee White King White Knight White Queen

Summary

Through the Looking Glass

Alice was very imaginative and loved to talk to her kittens. She had a looking glass house. One day she visited and crossed the glass, that she was able to step through it to an alternative world. Alice entering the Looking Glass. In this reflected version of her own house, she found a book with looking glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", she did not understand the language. Then she realized that the text must be reversed since she was in the looking glass world, so she hold the book up to the glass. The text was revealed to be the poem Jabberwocky, the language of which she still did not understand. Alice, feeling like she will not have time to see everything if she lingers, floats downstairs and out the door to explore the garden.

Upon leaving the house, she entered sunny spring garden where the flowers have the power of human speech; they perceived Alice as being a "flower that can move about." Elsewhere in the garden, Alice met the Red Queen, who impressed Alice with her ability to run at breathtaking speeds a referenced to the chess rule that queens were able to move any number of vacant squares at once, in any direction, making them the most agile of the pieces. The Red Queen reveals to Alice that the entire countryside was laid out in squared like a gigantic chessboard, and offers to make Alice a queen if she can move all the way to the eighth rank/row in a chess match. Alice is placed in the second rank as one of the White Queen's pawns, and begins her journey across the chessboard by boarding a train that literally jumped over the third row and directly into the fourth rank, acting on the rule that pawns can advance two spaces on their first move.

Then Alice met the twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whom she knew from the famous nursery rhyme. After reciting the long poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter", the Tweedles draw Alice's attention to the Red King, loudly snoring away under a nearby tree and maliciously provoke her with idle philosophical banter that she exists only as an imaginary figure in the Red King's dreams. Finally, the brothers began acting out their nursery-rhyme by suiting up for battle, only to be frightened away by an enormous crow, as the nursery rhyme about them predicts.

Alice next met the White Queen, who is very absent minded but boasts of  her ability to remember future events before they have happened. Alice and the White Queen advanced into the chessboard's fifth rank by crossing over a brook together, but at the very moment of the crossing, the Queen transforms into a talking Sheep in a small shop. Alice soon finds herself struggling to handle the oars of a small rowboat, where the Sheep annoys her with (seemingly) nonsensical shouting about "crabs" and "feathers".

After crossing yet another brook into the sixth rank, Alice immediately encounters Humpty Dumpty, who, besides celebrating his unbirthday, provided his own translation of the strange terms in "Jabberwocky" before his inevitable fall. "All the king's horses and all the king's men" come to Humpty Dumpty's assistance, naturally, and are accompanied by the White King along with the Lion and the Unicorn, who again proceed to act out a nursery rhyme by fighting each other. In this chapter, the March Hare and Hatter make a brief re-appearance in the guise of "Anglo-Saxon messengers" called "Haigha" and "Hatta".

Upon leaving the Lion and Unicorn to their fight, Alice reached the seventh rank by crossing another brook into the forested territory of the Red Knight, who was intent on capturing the "white pawn" Alice until the White Knight came to her rescue. Escorting her through the forest towards the final brook crossing, the Knight recites a long poem of his own composition, and repeatedly falls off his horse his clumsiness was a reference to the "eccentric" L-shaped movements of chess knights.

Bidding farewell to the White Knight, Alice step across the last brook and is automatically crowned a queen (the crown materialising abruptly on her head). She soon found herself in the company of both the White and Red Queens who relentlessly confound Alice by using word play to thwart her attempts at logical discussion. They then invited one another to a party that will be hosted by the newly crowned Alice (of which Alice herself had no prior knowledge). Alice arrived and seats herself at her own party which quickly turns to a chaotic uproar in which Alice finally grabs the Red Queen, believing her to be responsible for all the day's nonsense, and begins shaking her violently with all her might. By thus "capturing" the Red Queen, Alice unknowingly puts the Red King who has remained stationary throughout the book into checkmate, and is allowed to wake up Alice suddenly awakes in her armchair to find herself holding the black kitten, whom she deduces to have been the Red Queen all along, with the white kitten having been the White Queen. The story end with Alice recalling the speculation of the Tweedle brothers, that everything may have, in fact, been a dream of the Red King and that Alice might herself be no more than a figment of his imagination. One final poem was inserted by the author as a sort of epilogue which suggests that life itself is but a dream.