SparkNotes: Through the Looking-Glass: Chapter 1: Looking-Glass House Through the Looking-Glass Chapter 1: Looking-Glass House, page 2 page 1 of 2 Summary Alice rests at home in an armchair, talking drowsily to herself as her black kitten, Kitty, plays with a ball of string at her feet. Alice lovingly scolds the kitten for unraveling the ball of string that she had been winding up. She goes on to scold Kitty’s mother, Dinah, who is busy bathing the white kitten Snowdrop. Alice begins an imaginative conversation with Kitty, pretending that her pet talks back, and asks her to pretend that she is the Red Queen in a chess game. Alice attempts to arrange Kitty’s forelegs to better resemble the chess piece. When Kitty does not comply, Alice holds her up to the mirror above the mantle and threatens to put Kitty into the world on the other side of the mirror, which she calls “Looking-Glass House.” Alice thinks about what Looking-Glass House must be like, wondering aloud to Kitty if there might be a way to break through to the other side of the mirror. All of a sudden, Alice finds herself on the mantle, staring into the mirror.

She magically steps through the mirror into Looking-Glass House. On the other side of the mirror, Alice looks around and finds that the room she is standing in resembles the mirror image of the room in her own house. However, several parts of the room look quite different. The pictures on the wall near the mirror seem to be alive, and the mantle clock has the face of a grinning little man. Alice notices a group of chessmen inside the fireplace among the cinders, walking in line two-by-two. Alice examines them closely and determines that she is invisible to them. She hears a squeak behind her. Alice wheels around to find a White Pawn on the table. Out of the fireplace charges the White Queen, who knocks over the White King in her haste, rushing to grab her child. Alice helpfully lifts the White Queen onto the table, and the White Queen gasps in surprise as Alice grabs the Queen’s child Lily. The White King follows, but he quickly grows impatient. Alice lifts him up, dusts him off, and places him down next to the White Queen. The White King lies on his back, stunned in surprise, which causes Alice to realize that she is invisible to the chessmen.

Once the White King recovers, he pulls out a pencil and begins jotting his experience down, but Alice snatches the pencil from him and writes something down in his book. The White King comments that he must get a new book, since strange words seem to appear on the pages of his current one. Alice picks up one of the books from the table and discovers that the text is backward. She holds the book up to the mirror to read it properly and reads the poem on the page. The poem, entitled “Jabberwocky,” describes a knight’s travels to vanquish a hideous monster known as the Jabberwock. Perplexed by the poem, Alice sets the book down and decides to explore the rest of the house. As she leaves the room and begins heading down the stairs, she finds herself floating until she finally catches hold of the door-post to the door that leads outside of Looking-Glass House. Analysis In his stories, Carroll blurs the boundaries between being awake and being asleep so that it becomes difficult to tell where reality ends and dreaming begins. At the beginning of the chapter, Alice enjoys a drowsy winter nap near the fire.

She leaves her chair only to snatch up Kitty and place her on her knee. Alice dozes off in this position, and her step through the mirror happens in her dream. Since she is only half asleep, Alice’s experiences combine elements from the waking world and her dreams. The dream motif of Through the Looking-Glass differs from the one found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for here Alice exercises some control over what she encounters in her fantasy world. Alice’s repeated pleas to Kitty to play pretend emphasize her desire to exert some control over her imagination. Alice discovers that the room on the other side of the mirror is nearly identical to her old room, showing the motif of inversion that reappears throughout the text. The alternate dimension is not just a mirror image, but a comprehensive inversion of reality. In Looking-Glass House, Alice no longer needs a fire, since the winter of the real world becomes summer in the imagined world, where the gardens are in bloom and the trees are filled with leaves. Even the inanimate objects in Alice’s old room, such as the pictures and the mantle clock, spring to life. Alice appears invisible to the chess pieces, which is one aspect of the inversion that occurs in Looking-Glass House.

In Alice’s world, she is alive while the chess pieces are inanimate, but Looking-Glass World belongs to the chess pieces, where they have a working order to their lives. Like the chessboard, their lives are highly symmetrical and controlled. 1 Through the Looking-Glass | Literawiki | Fandom powered by Wikia [ show ] Plot On a snowy day in winter, the little girl Alice is scolding her cat Dinah's black kitten for misbehaving. She also remarks that the kitten has shown an interest in chess games and looks a bit like the red queen from her chess set. Alice starts to fantasize about the Looking-Glass House, the house which she can partially see in the living room mirror. She says that she would like to go through the mirror and see the rest of the house. Alice picks up the White King. 1871 illustration by John Tenniel. Alice dreams that the mirror dissolves around her. Passing into the living room of the Looking-Glass House, she finds that the parts of the room that she could not see before are quite different from the room in her own house. The paintings, the clock and the chess pieces are alive.

Alice sees that some of the chess pieces, including the White King and Queen and their baby daughter Lily the white pawn, have fallen on the floor and are among the ashes from the fireplace. She picks up and cleans the King and Queen, although they are frightened by the experience because they cannot see or hear her. Alice also tries to read one of the books in the room. She finds that she has to hold it up to a mirror to read the text. She reads the poem " Jabberwocky " but does not really understand it. Keen to see more of Looking-Glass Land, Alice goes out into the garden. She finds that all of the flowers there can talk, although they have difficulty understanding that she is not a plant like they are. Alice asks the flowers if there are any others like her in the garden. They point out to her that the Red Queen is there. Alice is surprised to find that the Red Queen, who was only a few inches high inside the house, is now taller than she is. The flowers explain that it is a result of the fresh air. From the top of the hill that she has gone to with the Red Queen, Alice can see that all of Looking-Glass land is a gigantic chessboard.

1902 illustration by Peter Newell. Diagram of the chess game played in Through the Looking-Glass. Illustration from the 1871 edition. Alice has difficulty walking towards the hill which the Red Queen has climbed. She eventually reaches her after she turns round and goes back the way she came. From the top of the hill, Alice can see that all of Looking-Glass is an enormous chessboard, the squares being divided by brooks, and that a game of chess is being played on it. When Alice says that she would like to join in the game, the Red Queen tells her that she can take baby Lily's place as a white pawn, adding that she will become a queen if she arrives at the Eighth Square at the end of the board. The Red Queen tells Alice that, since pawns can move two squares on their first move, she will quickly move from the Second Square to the Fourth Square by train, the Fourth Square is home to Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Fifth Square is mostly water, the Sixth Square belongs to Humpty Dumpty, the Seventh Square is a forest and in the Eighth Square they will have fun as queens together.

Wanting to avoid some elephants which are behaving like bees, Alice decides to walk another way and suddenly finds herself on board a train. The other passengers chastise her for not having a ticket. A gnat appears friendly towards Alice, although it keeps telling Alice that she missed the chance to make some puns. When Alice passes on to the Fourth Square, the train is no longer there but the gnat, now the size of a chicken, remains. It tells Alice about the nearby part of the forest where things have no names and about other insects in Looking-Glass Land, including the rocking-horse-fly, the snap-dragon-fly [1] and the bread-and-butter-fly. When Alice shows that she does not care for one of its jokes, the gnat vanishes away. Alice enters the part of the forest where things have no name. A young deer is happy to stay close to Alice, until they come back to where things have names. As soon as the deer recognizes that Alice is a human child, it flees in terror. Alice follows signs that point to the homes of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, [2] hoping to ask them the way out of the forest.

She sees that the two signs always point the same way, even when there is a fork in the road, and realizes that they both live in the same house. Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 1871 illustration by John Tenniel. The two brothers Tweedledee and Tweedledum detain Alice longer than she wants. she finds herself dancing with them and they recite the poem " The Walrus and the Carpenter " to her. They point out that the Red King is sleeping nearby. They tell her that she is not real but only a "sort of thing" in the Red King's dream, adding that, if the Red King should wake up, she would vanish. When Tweedledum accuses Tweedledee of breaking his new rattle, the two agree to have a fight. They are both frightened away by a gigantic crow, The enormous crow's flapping wings create a strong breeze. Alice notices a shawl flying away in the wind before seeing its owner, the White Queen, nearby. Alice fixes the White Queen's messy clothes and hair.

The White Queen explains that the people of Looking-Glass Land live backwards, which is why she bleeds and cries out in pain before she pricks her finger and also why one of the King's messengers [3] is currently in prison for a crime that he has not yet committed (and may never commit), After crossing a brook, Alice finds that the White Queen's voice has changed into a bleat. When she looks again, she sees that the White Queen has gone and that she is in a shop where the shopkeeper is an old sheep. Some time afterwards, the sheep hands Alice two knitting needles. The knitting needles suddenly change into oars and Alice finds herself in a small boat with the sheep. When Alice suddenly finds herself back in the shop again, she tells the sheep that she wants to buy an egg. The sheep places the egg on a shelf at the other end of the shop. As Alice walks towards the egg, She finds that it is getting bigger and that the shop has disappeared. After she jumps over a brook, she finds that the egg has become Humpty Dumpty himself. [4] Alice meets Humpty Dumpty. 1902 illustration by Peter Newell.

Humpty Dumpty takes an immediate dislike to Alice when she remarks that he looks like an egg. She tries to be friendly by expressing concern that he might fall from the high narrow wall on which he is sitting. However, she angers Humpty Dumpty more when she reveals that she knows that the King has promised to send all his horses and all his men if he should fall, which Humpty Dumpty believed to be a secret. Alice tries to compliment Humpty Dumpty on his clothes but insults him again because she is not sure if he is wearing a belt or a neck tie. Humpty Dumpty explains that it is a tie and it was an un-birthday present, a present which can be given on any day which is not one's birthday, from the White King and Queen. Humpty Dumpty considers himself to be a master of language, saying, "When I use a word, it means just what I want it to mean". He explains the meaning of the first verse of "Jabberwocky" to her, before reciting a poem of his own to her, which ends abruptly.

As she walks away, Alice comments on Humpty Dumpty, "Of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met", before she hears a loud crash. Alice sees thousands of the King's foot soldiers and soldiers on horseback rushing towards where Humpty Dumpty fell. The White King tells Alice that he sent more than four thousand men but did not send his Anglo-Saxon messengers Haigha and Hatta [5] because he needs them for other things. Haigha arrives and tells the King that the Lion and the Unicorn are once again in town and fighting for the crown. [6] The White King finds this very amusing because it is his crown and the winner will not receive it. Alice, the White King, Haigha, Hatta, the Lion and the Unicorn. 1871 illustration by John Tenniel. In town, the messenger Hatta, who has recently been released from prison, tells the King how the fight between the Lion and the Unicorn has been going. He is ordered to get some drummers to drum the Lion and the Unicorn out of town. The Lion and the Unicorn take a break from their fight to have some white bread, brown bread and plum cake.

The Unicorn is originally shocked at the sight of Alice, saying that he always thought that girls were just "fabulous monsters". The Lion is also puzzled by the sight of Alice, asking if she is "animal - vegetable - or mineral [7] ". Alice is ordered to serve some plum cake but finds that she cannot cut it. She is told to offer it first and cut it afterwards. When she offers the cake, it divides by itself. When the drummers arrive, Alice jumps over a brook to get away. Alice finds herself in a forest, where a Red Knight says, "Check!" and declares that Alice is his prisoner. A White Knight arrives and announces that he has rescued Alice. The two knights agree to have a fight. It ends when they both land on their heads but the White Knight is declared the winner. The White Knight tells Alice that he will accompany her to the end of the Seventh Square. In spite of claiming to have had "plenty of practice", the Knight is extremely bad at riding and keeps falling off his horse. He carries an array of objects with him, including a beehive, mousetraps, carrots and fire irons. His horse wears anklets to protect its feet from shark bites.

The White Knight fancies himself to be an inventor. He claims that his greatest invention was a pudding made of blotting paper, gunpowder and sealing wax. Before leaving Alice, he sings her a song to a tune which he claims to have composed, although Alice knows that not to be true because she recognizes the music. The White Queen, Queen Alice and the Red Queen. 1871 illustration by John Tenniel. Passing over the brook into the Eighth Square, Alice finds that she is wearing a crown. The White Queen and the Red Queen suddenly appear. The Red Queen tells Alice that she cannot be a real queen until she has passed an examination. She asks Alice a series of trick questions, although the White Queen ends up getting more confused than Alice and needs to take a nap to recover. Alice suddenly finds herself in front of a doorway marked "Queen Alice". With some difficulty, she enters the building and finds that a dinner party is being held. The guest are animals, birds and flowers. Alice finds that the food is alive and that it is considered bad manners for her to eat a leg of mutton and a pudding after she has been introduced to them.

The Red Queen urges Alice to give a speech, at which point the candles grow enormous, the bottles change into bird-like creatures and many guests jump on the table cloth. Alice angrily throws off the table cloth and looks around for the Red Queen, who she considers responsible for the strange goings on. She finds that the Red Queen has shrunk to the size of a doll. She picks up the Queen and says, "I'll shake you into a kitten". Waking up, Alice finds that she is holding Dinah's black kitten. She realizes that she has been dreaming but also continues to believe that she was part of the Red King's dream. She is confused as to whose dream it was. Adaptations There have been several adaptations of Through the Looking-Glass to other media and even more adaptations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which also include characters and themes taken from Through the Looking-Glass.

Adaptations of Through the Looking-Glass alone include Walter lang's 1928 silent film Alice Through a Looking-Glass, a 1966 American TV musical, British TV movies from 1973 and 1998 and a 2008 opera which also draws on the life of Alice Lidell, the girl on whom Lewis Carroll modeled the character of Alice. Animated versions of the story were made in the Soviet Union in 1982 and in Australia in 1987. The 1933 Hollywood film version of Alice in Wonderland contains many elements from Through the Looking-Glass as well, including an animated version of " The Walrus and the Carpenter ", directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, and a star turn by W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty. Alice talks to flowers in Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland. Walt Disney's 1951 animated Alice in Wonderland includes several elements taken from Through the looking-Glass, including the concept of "un-birthdays", talking flowers and unusual insects. The characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee appear and recite the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter".

The Cheshire Cat recites the first verse of " Jabberwocky " each time it appears. Tim Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland also draws on concepts from Through the Looking Glass. The characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the White Queen and the Jabberwocky appear. The principal antagonist in the movie, played by Helena-Bonham Carter, is called the Red Queen. [8] A sequel to the movie, directed by James Bobin, was released in 2016. Although it is titled Alice Through the Looking-Glass, the 2016 film, in which an adult Alice searches for the Mad Hatter's family and travels back in time, has very little in common with Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. The second half of Irwin Allen's two-part TV movie Alice in Wonderland, first broadcast on CBS in the United States on December 10, 1985, is based on Through the Looking-Glass. In the TV movie, the Jabberwock monster comes alive after Alice reads "Jabberwocky" and pursues her for the rest of the film.

The 1999 British-American TV movie Alice in Wonderland, which aired on NBC in the United States and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 1999, features the characters of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Red Knight, the White Knight, the sleeping Red King and the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter". The 2009 miniseries Alice, which aired on the Syfy channel in the United States, draws on concepts from both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. See also Through the Looking Glass: Summary, Characters & Author - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com Through the Looking Glass: Summary, Characters & Author Watch short & fun videos Start Your Free Trial Today An error occurred trying to load this video. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. You must create an account to continue watching Register for a free trial Are you a student or a teacher? I am a student Start Your Free Trial To Continue Watching As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over lessons in math, English, science, history, and more. Plus, get practice tests, quizzes, and personalized coaching to help you succeed.

Coming up next: True Blood: Books, Characters & Author You're on a roll. Keep up the good work! Your next lesson will play in 10 seconds 0:01 Introduction to… 3:23 Major Characters of the Story 5:41 Lesson Summary Add to Add to Add to Want to watch this again later? Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. Custom Courses are courses that you create from Study.com lessons. Use them just like other courses to track progress, access quizzes and exams, and share content. Teachers Organize and share selected lessons with your class. Make planning easier by creating your own custom course. Students Create a new course from any lesson page or your dashboard. From any lesson page: Click "Add to" located below the video player and follow the prompts to name your course and save your lesson. From your dashboard: Click on the "Custom Courses" tab, then click "Create course". Next, go to any lesson page and begin adding lessons. Edit your Custom Course directly from your dashboard. Personalize: Name your Custom Course and add an optional description or learning objective. Organize: Create chapters to group lesson within your course.

Remove and reorder chapters and lessons at any time. Share your Custom Course or assign lessons and chapters. Teacher Edition: Share or assign lessons and chapters by clicking the "Teacher" tab on the lesson or chapter page you want to assign. Students' quiz scores and video views will be trackable in your "Teacher" tab. Premium Edition: You can share your Custom Course by copying and pasting the course URL. Only Study.com members will be able to access the entire course. Create an account to start this course today Try it free for 5 days! Lesson Transcript Instructor: Francesca Marinaro Francesca M. Marinaro has a PhD in English from the University of Florida and has been teaching English composition and Literature since 2007. Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass' is the sequel to 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and one of the most beloved classics of children's literature. This lesson provides an overview of the plot, main characters and major themes of the story. Introduction to Through the Looking Glass Imagine a world where everything is backward, where animals and flowers talk, chess pieces come to life, and you can't cut a cake before you eat it.

In Lewis Carroll's Victorian children's classic, Through the Looking Glass, just such a world exists. Carroll wrote the story in 1869 as a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was a children's book that had been published in 1865 to mixed reviews. When Through the Looking Glass was published in 1871, it was received far more enthusiastically and has remained a classic staple of Victorian children's fiction, delighting child and adult readers alike with its whimsical imaginary world. Plot Summary The book begins with 7-year-old Alice sitting in her drawing room with her kitten. An imaginative child, Alice begins to describe to the kitten a world that exists just beyond the mirror in the drawing room. The world looks much the same as the one in which they live, only everything is reversed. Suddenly Alice finds herself standing in front of the mirror, but she realizes when she looks around that she has magically appeared on the other side of the mirror in a world where flowers talk, walking forward only seems to bring her back to her starting point, and the only way to read a book is to hold it up to a mirror.

After attempting unsuccessfully to read a poem, 'Jabberwocky,' by holding it up to the mirror, Alice wanders through a garden of talking flowers and eventually meets the Red Queen in a landscape that looks like a giant chessboard. She asks if she can play, and the Red Queen permits her to become one of the white pieces, explaining to her that she must reach the other side of the board if she wants to become a queen herself. This begins an interesting series of adventures across the board-landscape. Alice seems not so much to run across the board as to magically disappear and reappear in different places.

Along the way, she meets a host of comical characters, including a talking gnat who seems to know a lot about the world, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum, a silly pair of twins who amuse her with their recitation of a poem, 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' Each time Alice begins to get her bearings, she magically finds herself in a new place, including a wood where she temporarily forgets her name, a shop where she haggles over the purchase of an egg that turns into Humpty Dumpty, and the center of town where she finds herself the prize in a battle between the Red Knight, who wants to carry her away, and the White Knight, who manages to protect her and promises to deliver her safely to the other side of the chessboard. When Alice finds herself sitting on a bank at the other end of the board, a crown magically appears in her lap, and the Red and White Queens both show up and begin asking her complicated questions about everything from math to philosophy and the meaning of truth, until she mysteriously finds herself standing in front of a castle with the words 'Queen Alice' inscribed on the door.

A giant frog lets her in and leads her to a feast in her honor that quickly erupts in chaos. Frustrated by the mayhem around her, she pulls at the tablecloth, sending food, drinks, and guests flying. Blaming the Red Queen for everything, Alice picks her up and shakes her violently until, with a jolt, she finds herself back in her drawing room, shaking her poor kitten. As the novel ends, readers are left pondering the power of the imagination and the blurring of boundaries between reality and fantasy as Alice wonders which world was real. Did she dream it all, or is she just a character in someone else's dream? Major Characters of the Story Seven-year-old Alice is the heroine of the story, a returning character from Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A bright and imaginative young girl, she wants to grow up and be a Victorian Lady in a neat and orderly world. Her adventure into the looking glass both brings home the importance of embracing the magic of childhood and the somewhat harsher reality that real adult life isn't quite as neat and orderly as Alice would like it to be.

The challenges she faces, principally her journey across the chessboard, which mirrors the passage from childhood to adulthood, teach her the importance of acting and thinking for herself, which are all part of growing up. It isn't just pretty manners and hosting tea parties. In her travels, Alice meets a host of colorful characters. Gnat is a wise, kind old character; one of the few kind characters Alice meets in her backward, looking glass world. He is her guide through the woods and warns her to be careful of things like word play and wary of things that aren't what they appear to be. Humpty Dumpty is a talking egg who, naturally, sits perched atop a ledge and recites poetry. He tells Alice that he can reverse the meanings of words, making them mean whatever he wants them to, and treats her rudely when she admits that she can't understand anything in this mixed up world.

× Jabberwocky JABBERWOCKY Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There , 1872) `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Looking-Glass House | Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll | Sabian Assembly 1. Looking-Glass House Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: — it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr — no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good. But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle. 'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. 'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners!

You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage — and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it might. 'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me — only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in stick for the bonfire — and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off.

Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again. 'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on as soon as they were comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!' she went on, holding up one finger. 'I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard you! What that you say?' (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) 'Her paw went into your eye? Well, that's your fault, for keeping your eyes open — if you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened.

Now don't make any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't looking! 'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of them yet. You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week — Suppose they had saved up all mypunishments!' she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. 'What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came. Or — let me see — suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind that much! I'd far rather go without them than eat them! 'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside.

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again." And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about — whenever the wind blows — oh, that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. 'And I do so wish it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown. 'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it: and when I said "Check!" you purred! Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my pieces.

Kitty, dear, let's pretend — 'And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the say before — all because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say, 'Well, you can be one of them then, and I'll be all the rest." And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.' But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. 'Let's pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her.

Now do try, there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was — 'and if you're not good directly,' she added, 'I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?' 'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through the glass — that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair — all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit!

I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too — but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room. 'How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink — But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it!

Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through — ' She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire.

Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!' Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was a different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her. 'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders: but in another moment, with a little 'Oh!' of surprise, she was down on her hands and knees watching them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two!

'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a whisper, for fear of frightening them), 'and there are the White King and the White Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel — and here are two castles walking arm in arm — I don't think they can hear me,' she went on, as she put her head closer down, 'and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible — ' Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made her turn her head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and begin kicking: she watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next. 'It is the voice of my child!' the White Queen cried out as she rushed past the King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. 'My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!' and she began scrambling wildly up the side of the fender. 'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a little annoyed with the Queen, for he was covered with ashes from head to foot.

Alice was very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily was nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on the table by the side of her noisy little daughter. The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had quite taken away her breath and for a minute or two she could do nothing but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she called out to the White King, who was sitting sulkily among the ashes, 'Mind the volcano!' 'What volcano?' said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if he thought that was the most likely place to find one. 'Blew — me — up,' panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath. 'Mind you come up — the regular way — don't get blown up!' Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar, till at last she said, 'Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table, at that rate.

I'd far better help you, hadn't I?' But the King took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her. So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away: but, before she put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was so covered with ashes. She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor. 'Oh! please don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting that the King couldn't hear her. 'You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open!

All the ashes will get into it — there, now I think you're tidy enough!' she added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen. The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper — so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said. The King was saying, 'I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of my whiskers!' To which the Queen replied, 'You haven't got any whiskers.' 'The horror of that moment,' the King went on, 'I shall never, never forget!' 'You will, though,' the Queen said, 'if you don't make a memorandum of it.' Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing.

A sudden thought struck her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his shoulder, and began writing for him. The poor King look puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at last he panted out, 'My dear! I really must get a thinner pencil. I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend — ' 'What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking over the book (in which Alice had put 'The White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly') 'That's not a memorandum of your feelings!' There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, ' — for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself. It was like this.

YKCOWREBBAJ sevot yhtils eht dna ,gillirb sawT' ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD ,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again." This was the poem that Alice read. JABBERWOCKY 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. 'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!' He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought — So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. 'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. 'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow t seems to fill my head with ideas — only I don't exactly know what they are!

However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate—' 'But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, 'if I don't make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the rest of the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!' She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs — or, at least, it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find herself walking again in the natural way. Through the Looking Glass

Question: In "Through the Looking Glass", Alice uses a mirror to read which poem?
Answer: Jabberwocky