“Jabberwocky” [text of poem is below] is admittedly non-sense. So, it probably doesn't speak very well of me that I want to try to explore its meaning. Nonetheless, here goes. The meaning of this curious concoction of words and images by Lewis Carroll has been widely debated. God only knows what Carroll would make of anyone attempting to make sense of non-sense.
I've read Jabberwocky for years with wonderment, but recently I re-read it, and suddenly it all popped into focus for me. Jabberwocky is a précis of all the romantic tales of medieval poetry ever written. In Beowulf, for example, the mighty prince meets up with the monster and a mighty battle ensues. So too here, in mock miniature, the youthful hero, “my son,” is being prepped for battle by an elder narrator. He tells him how things stand in stanza one. “Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” There now that's plain as day. Then in stanza two the narrator explains the evil creatures likely to attack him, the Jabberwock, the Jubjub bird, and the “frumious Bandersnatch.”
Carroll is saying, “This is serious business children, pay attention!”
In stanza three, we see the oft-praised sword of the hero, here called vorpal, and we hear about the hero's great battle, again in miniature. “The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!” That's it. Battle over. The great epics of old are getting a severe pruning. In stanza four, back in the king's rath, the “boy” is praised for his heroism, and the poem returns to the opening verse, now with emphasis on the past tense of the threat. “'Twas brillig….”
There is a sort of contrarian theory that claims that even the original medieval poems were written as mock-heroic epics, in which case Jabberwocky is no more satirical and silly than its models. But even if you take the Arthurian poetry of a thousand years ago at face value, you have to admit that they take you into a mythical world which is unlikely to have existed exactly as described. A large measure of exaggeration, if not self-mockery, had to be involved.
Of course the hardest thing to overcome is the presence of so many non-sense words. We are so used to having our dictionaries to guide us. Our natural tendency is to reduce all poetry to words and strangle meaning out of word chunks. Here, in the absence of exact word meanings, for the most part, the reader is left to sense how the sounds of the words convey the meanings. This method of interpretation is probably much closer to that which the bards of old used to spin their poetic tales around a warm hearth fire on a cold winter night.
Thus, in the first stanza “gyre” seems to me to mean to circle about in fear, and “mimsy” appears to be a state of waffling uncertainty. Everybody from the “slithy toves” to the “borogoves” were in a right fit. Raths were, in fact, defensive medieval houses used by the Celts, and the folk are all in a state of advanced “outgrabe,” if you follow me here. Especially as it appears at the end of the line, “outgrabe” has a lovely Germanic feel to it that implies a kind of clutching at straws.
You can pretty much leave your dictionary behind, though some scholars have insisted on trying to wear out etymological dictionaries with the effort to trace each word's origin. Lewis Carroll, himself, started all this lingo-babble when he has Alice and Humpty Dumpty discuss the words in Jabberwocky.
I think this is what Lewis Carroll intended. After all, these are children's verses. Kids don't know half of the words we talk at them. Lewis Carroll is just turning the tables on the adult readers who now have to face the perpetual state of childhood language. It seems only fair really.
Well,”slithy” means “lithe and slimy,”
Then Professor Dumpty identifies “mimsy” as a simple combination of “flimsy and miserable.” I suppose that makes “Jabberwocky,” a walkey through jabber-talky? It's easy to get lost in the luggage here. To me, it makes much more sense to feel the impact of each word in context, and let the syntax of the sentence carry the meaning along conceptually. In other words, grab each portmanteau by the handle. Don't try to unpack it.
“Lithe” is the same as active. You see
it's like a portmanteau -- there are two
meanings packed up in one word.
Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll
(from 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.
Gary Lehmann teaches writing and poetry at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the director of the Athenaeum Poetry group which recently published their first chapbook, Poetic Visions. When not writing or teaching, he interprets 19th century shoemaking at the Genesee Country Museum.
(Copyright 2004 by Gary Lehmann - No reproduction without express permission from the author)
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Letter to the Author: Gary Lehmann at glehmann@rochester.rr.com