A Short Analysis of ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll (2024)

By Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Jabberwocky’ is perhaps the most famous nonsense poem in all of English literature. Although the poem was first published in Lewis Carroll‘s novelThrough the Looking Glassin 1871,the first stanza was actually written and printedby Carroll in 1855 in the little periodicalMischmasch,which Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) compiled to entertain his family. Below is ‘Jabberwocky’ (sometimes erroneously called ‘The Jabberwocky’), followed by a brief analysis of its meaning. ‘Nonsense’ literature it may be, but let’s see if we can make some sense of the glorious nonsense.

‘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.

Jabberwocky: a summary

In terms of its plot, ‘Jabberwocky’ might be described as nonsense literature’s answer to the epic Anglo-Saxon poemBeowulf: what Christopher Booker, in his vast and fascinating The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, calls an ‘overcoming the monster’ story.

A hero leaves home and goes out into the world in order to face down some evil; after encountering difficulties and tests of his bravery, he is triumphant and vanquishes his foe; and then he comes home again. It’s a story told again and again in literature, from Beowulf toThe Lord of the Rings. Of course it is also an example of what we would now call the fantasy genre: supernatural or fictional monsters or creatures feature (namely, in Carroll’s poem, the Jubjub Bird, the Bandersnatch, and, of course, the Jabberwock itself).

The structure of Carroll’s poem echoes this basic plot structure (‘overcoming the monster’) in two ways: through adopting the ballad metre traditionally used for poems telling such a story (that is, the four-line stanza, or quatrain form), and through repeating the opening stanza in the closing stanza, suggesting the hero’s return home after his adventure.

Jabberwocky: an analysis

‘Jabberwocky’, in one sense, takes us back to the very earliest ‘English’ poems, such as the great Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, in which the titular hero faces the fearsome monster Grendel (and, after that, faces the wrath of Grendel’s mother as well as a mighty dragon). Such stories of ‘overcoming the monster’ are as old as English literature itself, then, and there are other myths associated with England – such as the story of the patron saint of England, St George, slaying the dragon – which utilise this motif.

Another useful way of interpreting ‘Jabberwocky’ is through considering the oral fairy-tale tradition. Fairy tales tend to use similar tropes, character types, and plot lines, as Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his Morphology of the Folk Tale. So a hero often absents himself or herself from home (much as the intrepid hero of ‘Jabberwocky’ has to head off to face the Jabberwock), and has to face a villain or monster (the Jabberwock), before triumphing and returning home. These elements are obviously present in Carroll’s poem.

But is this where the chief appeal of the poem lies, when so much of the language Carroll uses is, clearly, nonsense?

After all, as well as being an example of a fantasy quest, the poem is also a masterpiece of linguistic inventiveness: every stanza is a feast of neologisms – new words, coinages, nonsense formations. Several of them have even entered common usage: ‘chortle’ (a blend of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’) and ‘galumph’ (meaning to move in a clumsy way) are both used by many people who probably have no idea that we have Lewis Carroll to thank for them. (‘Mimsy’, too, is often credited to Carroll – though it actually existed prior to the poem.)

Consider that opening stanza:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Consider Carroll’s use of (invented) words in this stanza. What are ‘toves’, and why are they ‘slithy’? What does ‘slithiness’ (is that a word?) look or feel like? The same with ‘mimsy’. Noam Chomsky’s ground-breaking work in linguistics surrounding children’s ability to acquire a linguistic ‘grammar’ demonstrated that even if we don’t know the meaning of a word, we can often deduce what kind of word it is: i.e. we know ‘mimsy’ is an adjective, or describing-word, even though we don’t fully know what ‘mimsiness’ is.

Carroll is using both ‘slithy’ and ‘mimsy’ as portmanteau words: slithy, for example, is a blend of slimy + lithe, while mimsy suggests miserable + flimsy. Another term for a portmanteau word is, in fact, a blend, and some linguists prefer to use the word blend. But the term ‘portmanteau’ came about because, after Alice has encountered the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ in Through the Looking-Glass, and puzzled over the meaning of these unfamiliar words, she meets Humpty Dumpty, who tells her, when she quotes the above stanza:

‘That’s enough to begin with,’ Humpty Dumpty interrupted: ‘there are plenty of hard words there. “Brillig” means four o’clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.’

‘That’ll do very well,’ said Alice: ‘and “slithy”?’

‘Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy”. “Lithe” is the same as “active”. You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.’

A portmanteau was, in Victorian times, a case or bag for carrying clothing while travelling; the word is from the French meaning literally ‘carry the cloak’.

So, as well as being a fine piece of imaginative literature, ‘Jabberwocky’ also demonstrates a central principle of language: what linguists call productivity oropen-endedness, namely the phenomenon whereby users of a language can endlessly create new words or phrases. As Noam Chomsky’s theory of a Universal Grammar shows, users of a language demonstrate an innate linguistic creativity from a young age, and this is how children are able to pick up a new language relatively quickly: they learn not simply by acquiring knowledge, but by using an in-built talent for spotting how words are put together to form meaningful utterances. If something is both lithe andslimy, why not combine the two words – both their sounds and their meanings – to createslithy?

Here is a brief glossary of what the various nonsense words in ‘Jabberwocky’ mean. As poems go, this one must have one of the highest rates of neologism-to-words of all classic poems in the English language. Perhaps surprisingly, many of them have found their way into theOxford English Dictionary; we have put (OED) after those words which have an entry in the dictionary.

Jabberwock: the monster (with jaws and claws – we aren’t given much else by way of description) (OEDwith the extended meaning ‘incoherent or nonsensical expression’)

brillig: the time when people begin broiling things for dinner (around 4pm)

slithy: lithe and slimy (OED)

toves: a (fictional) species of badger with horns like a stag and which lives predominantly on cheese (OED)

gyre: twirl around like a gyre (actually predates Carroll)

gimble: bore holes like a gimlet

wabe: the wet side of a hill soaked by the rain (OED)

mimsy: unhappy or miserable (OED)

borogoves: (fictional) type of bird

mome: grave or solemn (OED)

raths: (fictional) turtle with a mouth like a shark and a smooth green body; lives on swallows and oysters (OED)

outgrabe: emitted a strange noise (past tense of, presumably,outgribe) (OED)

Jubjub bird: ‘An imaginary bird of a ferocious, desperate and occasionally charitable nature, noted for its excellence when cooked’ (OED)

frumious: so angry or furious as to be fuming (OED)

Bandersnatch: ‘A fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature, of dangerous propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to flee from; later, used vaguely to suggest any creature with such qualities’ (OED)

vorpal: (of a sword) keen and deadly (OED)

manxome: fearsome or monstrous (OED)

Tumtum tree: a fictional tree

uffish: huffish (OED)

whiffling: blowing in puffs or gusts of air (this word predates Carroll)

tulgey: thick, dense, and dark (OED)

burbled: to speak in murmurs (OED)

snicker-snack: with a snipping or clicking sound (OED)

galumphing: to gallop in triumph (OED)

beamish: radiant or shining (this word predates Carroll)

frabjous: fair and joyous; fabulous (OED)

chortled: chuckled and snorted (OED)

For more information about what individual words of the poem mean, see Humpty Dumpty’s explanation of ‘Jabberwocky’ fromThrough the Looking-Glass. Continue your odyssey into the world of nonsense verse with our discussion of Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.

About Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is celebrated around the world as one of the great purveyors of ‘literary nonsense’: his booksAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland(1865) andThrough the Looking-Glass(1871) have entertained countless readers since they were published nearly 150 years ago. For many, the name ‘Lewis Carroll’ is synonymous with children’s literature.

But ‘Lewis Carroll’ was really a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church, Oxford. As such, he led something of a double life: to the readers of hisAlicebooks he was Lewis Carroll, while to the world of mathematics and to his colleagues at the University of Oxford he was (Reverend) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a man who formed his pen name by reversing his first two names (‘Charles Lutwidge’ became ‘Lewis Carroll’).

There is a famous anecdote about Carroll and Queen Victoria. Victoria enjoyedAlice’s Adventures in Wonderlandso much that she requested a first edition of Carroll’s next book. Carroll duly sent her a copy of the next book he published – a mathematical work with the exciting titleAn Elementary Treatise on Determinants. Unfortunately, like most good anecdotes, this one isn’t true, but the fact that it is often told highlightsthe oddness of Carroll’s double life. Carroll, despite the radical nature of his nonsense fiction, was a conservative mathematician who resented and dismissed many of the new ideas emerging in mathematics during the nineteenth century.

Carroll was a shy man who suffered from a stammer throughout his life and from being deaf in one ear (the result of a fever he suffered from in childhood). Carroll identified himself with the Dodo inAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland, leading some to suggest (though it remains only a suggestion) that this was because of Carroll’s own difficulty in pronouncing his last name (‘Do-Do’, from Dodgson).

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Image: Illustration for ‘Jabberwocky’ by John Tenniel, 1871;Wikimedia Commons.

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