Alice Through The Looking Glass

Name – Sarita
Roll no- 19/Eng/41
Ques. Discuss the Garden of Live Flowers as a

playful fantasy about language.
Answer;- It was Lewis Carroll's fantasy, Alice's

Adventures in Wonderland, published in 1865 in
England that signaled the change in writing style for
children to an imaginative and empathetic one.
Regarded as the first "English masterpiece written
for children" and as a founding book in the
development of fantasy literature, its publication
opened the "First Golden Age" of children's
literature in Britain and Europe that continued until
the early 1900s.
Through the Looking-Glass, published in 1871
is a novel by Lewis Carroll and the sequel to Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Alice again
enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing
through a mirror into the world that she can see
beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection,
everything is reversed, including logic (e.g. running
helps you remain stationary, walking away from
something brings you towards it, chessmen are alive,
nursery rhyme characters exist, etc.).
Through the looking glass is a literary
nonsense fiction. Literary nonsense is a type of
fiction that often defies common sense and creates
an entirely new world through the manipulation of
language. Often it constructs then deconstructs the
very meaning of words and, through this process,
reveals how arbitrary the semantics (or meaning) of
language can be.
Lewis Carroll, made literary nonsense a worldwide
phenomenon with Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky", which appears in the
latter book, is often considered quintessential
nonsense literature.
Carroll’s inventive, evocative and fun use of language
takes over and turns this into a different kind of
adventure. Through the looking glass is a nonsense
literature. In the nonsense and disorder Carroll
satires the Victorian society, plays with the words
and hide deep logic in the disorder.
D.H.Monro, for example, in the Argument of
Laughter, remarks that Carroll’s technique is “to take
some well-worn, trite form of words, and explore it
for unexpected and impossible meanings. The
method is precisely the method of serious
intellectual and endeavor- of logic or mathematics.
But the object is different. We are no longer
concerned to find truth and order a new meaning.
We are looking for fantasy and disorder and
nonsense.”
At the beginning of Alice adventure in the looking

glass world, she enters in a world of pure
imagination where the flowers can speak; she ask
from the flowers that are not they afraid of being
planted out in the open with nobody to take care of
them? Rose replies that there is a tree to protect
them from danger.
“But what could it do, if any danger came?’ Alice
asked.
‘It says “Bough-wough!”’ cried a Daisy: ‘that’s why
its branches are called boughs!”
The bough-wough of tree and the bow-wow of the
dog are same. The bark of the tree and the bark of
the dog are brought together in a fantastic and funny
way. The flowers are not afraid of any danger
because the tree has bark. The bark of the tree is
similar to the bark of a dog. The word bark ought to
mean one thing either the bark of a tree or a dog.
Here the word bark is arbitrarily used for the two
different things.
Caroll is trying to make fun of characteristics of
English language where the same word arbitrarily
means two different things. So in the looking glass
world there is logic to the language. The word is
connected to the nature of that thing which it stands
for.
The looking glass world is joyous; there is
celebration of life and elements of fantasy in that
world. But in the element of fantasy there is rigor
and he uses many 19 century ideas for example the
bough wough theory which states that human
language is developed from the sounds of animals. It
was common in 19th century.
Caroll again uses simple pun, pun with purpose

when Alice ask from the flowers how can they talk so
well she says that she has been in many gardens
before but she has never seen any flower
talking. The Tiger-lily tells her to feel the ground.
It's hard, and the lily explains that most garden beds
are too soft, so the flowers sleep all the time. This
makes sense to Alice.
“Put your hand down, and feel the ground,’ said the
Tiger-lily. ‘Then you’ll know why.’
Alice did so. ‘It’s very hard,’ she said, ‘but I don’t
see what that has to do with it.’
‘In most gardens,’ the Tiger-lily said, ‘they make
the beds too soft—so that the flowers are always
asleep.”
The beds are too soft that’s why the flowers are
always asleep. So the pun is used on the word bed.
The bed on which we sleep and the bed of flowers.
The same pun continues throughout the chapter
and deepens it effects. When Alice says to the Queen
that she has lost her way then again Caroll shows us
his amazing sense of pun and logic.
“‘I don’t know what you mean by your way,’ said
the Queen: ‘all the ways about here belong to me—
but why did you come out here at all?”
The pronouns me, my, his, her etc. are used in
English language to depict that something belongs to
a person. The Queen gets hold of that and she asks
Alice what she means by her way. In the looking
glass world the language is what precisely it means.
Queen gives many instructions to the Alice and the
most valuable instruction is ‘remember who you are’.
Caroll is aware of who he is and how the glass
world is his imagination and it is his fantasy which
has been able to create these wonderful texts. So in
the interesting and fantastical journey that Alice was
going to make through the looking glass world and
in the chess game she never forgets who she was and
her character. When Red Queen says remember who
you are it is injunction to the Alice and to the
readers. We must remember who we are and we
must remember the child who lives in us.
So it seems obvious that language is a theme

underlying virtually in the through the looking glass.
The question raised by what most critics Carroll's
"word-play the questions of modern philosophers A.
J. Ayer, for example speaks of the naive assumption
that definite descriptive phrases are demonstrative
symbols" that words have essential meaning rather
than arbitrary ones. And Ogden and Richards carry
the matter further "No important question of verbal
usage can be considered without raising questions as
to the rank or level and the truth or falsity of the
actual references which may employ them" But
Carroll has antedated all three: the question of
meaning and the question of value are the very crux
of the dealing with language in Through the
Looking-Glass.
With the clear eyes of a child, Lewis Caroll made us

look at the various phenomena of contemporary life.
The absurd in the fairy tale shows the satire of the
author and the embodiment of the serious problems
of the Victorian era. Lewis Carroll is ironic about the
prim and all-out regulated life of the "golden"
Victorian century .He creates a dream world that
defies logic, yet consistently remains logical and he
manipulates the constructs of everyday language.

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Name – Sarita

Roll no- 19/Eng/41

Ques. Discuss the Garden of Live Flowers as a

Answer;- It was Lewis Carroll's fantasy, Alice's

At the beginning of Alice adventure in the looking

Caroll again uses simple pun, pun with purpose

So it seems obvious that language is a theme

With the clear eyes of a child, Lewis Caroll made us

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