Resumen
Resumen de Through the Looking-Glass
Para quién es
For readers who love Alice in Wonderland, wordplay, logic puzzles and nonsense verse, and parents who enjoy reading aloud.
De qué trata este libro
Through the Looking-Glass is a children's novel by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson. It appeared in 1871 as the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The first book follows a girl who tumbles down a rabbit hole. This one follows a game. Alice climbs through a mirror above her fireplace and finds a country laid out like a chessboard, where she is a pawn with a chance to become a queen.
Carroll wrote the book for the children he loved to entertain, above all Alice Liddell, the girl who had inspired the first story. He fills it with talking flowers, a nonsense poem, a king asleep under a tree, and an egg who argues about the meaning of words. Everything runs backwards or sideways, and every odd rule has a joke hidden inside it. Under the jokes sit real questions about language, time, and what it means to be real.
In about fifteen minutes you will walk the whole board with Alice, square by square. You will meet the people she meets and hear what each one teaches her, or fails to teach her. You will also see why the book is built the way it is. We begin in a quiet room on a snowy afternoon, in front of a mirror and a kitten.
En este resumen
- 1A mirror opens onto a chessboard countryFree
- 2Running hard only keeps you in place
- 3Two fat brothers and a sleeping king
- 4The White Queen lives backwards, and a shop shifts
- 5Humpty Dumpty makes words obey him
- 6A lion, a unicorn and a gentle knight
- 7Words, logic and the rules of nonsense
- 8How the book is built, from chess to mirror
Idea clave 1 de 8
A mirror opens onto a chessboard country
The story begins at home on a winter afternoon. Alice is in the drawing room with her old cat Dinah and two kittens, a black one called Kitty and a white one called Snowdrop. She talks to Kitty about the room she can see in the mirror over the fireplace. Perhaps the fire there smokes, she says. Perhaps the books read backwards.
Then she climbs onto the mantelpiece, and the glass turns soft as mist. She steps through and finds herself in the Looking-glass House. The clock on the wall wears a smiling face. The chessmen on the hearth are alive, and they walk about without noticing her. A book on the table holds a poem printed in reverse, so she holds it up to the mirror to read it.
The poem is Jabberwocky. It sounds like English and follows English grammar, yet most of its words mean nothing Alice knows. She admits it fills her head with ideas, though she cannot say which ones. It is the first sign that in this country sense and sound have come apart.
Outside, the garden is full of flowers who talk. A tiger-lily, a rose and a crowd of daisies speak sharply, and they say that Alice is slow and that her petals, so to speak, are untidy. The daisies shriek whenever she comes near. Alice also finds that every path she takes toward the hill leads her straight back to the house. She learns the first rule of the country. To reach a place you must walk away from it.
Then she meets the Red Queen, who is as tall as Alice and very bossy. The Queen tells her that the whole land is a great game of chess, and that Alice may join as a pawn. If she gets to the eighth square, she will become a queen herself. Alice is happy to play, though she would rather be a queen at once. The Queen sets her on the second square and begins to run.
That’s 1 of 8 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Alice
- Alice is a curious, polite girl who enters a mirror country and meets its bewildering inhabitants.
- The Red Queen
- The Red Queen is a stern chessboard ruler who instructs Alice and demands that she keep pace.
- The White Queen
- The White Queen is a kindly, disorganized ruler whom Alice helps with her shawl and hair.
- Tweedledum and Tweedledee
- Tweedledum and Tweedledee are identical brothers who entertain Alice with poems and unsettling arguments about dreams.
- Humpty Dumpty
- Humpty Dumpty is a proud egg who lectures Alice about language and explains the words of Jabberwocky.
- The White Knight
- The White Knight is a gentle, awkward inventor who befriends Alice and offers her protection.
- The Lion and the Unicorn
- The Lion and the Unicorn are rival beasts fighting for the White King's crown when Alice encounters them.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 31,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 2 h 5 min
- Listening time3 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Through the Looking-Glass
What is Through the Looking-Glass about?
It follows Alice as she climbs through a mirror into a land laid out as a chessboard. She meets odd characters on each square, such as the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty and the White Knight, and tries to reach the eighth square.
Is Through the Looking-Glass a sequel to Alice in Wonderland?
Yes. Lewis Carroll published it in 1871 as the follow-up to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It has the same heroine, but a new setting, a chess-game structure, and different characters, so you can read it on its own.
What does the poem Jabberwocky mean?
It is a nonsense poem about a young hero who slays a monster, written with invented words. In the book Humpty Dumpty explains some of them, such as slithy for lithe and slimy. Many have since entered English.
Who is Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass?
He is a large talking egg who sits on a wall. He is proud and rude, says that words mean what he chooses, and explains the meanings of the invented words in Jabberwocky to Alice.
Is Through the Looking-Glass hard to read?
Not really. The language is clear, the chapters are short, and the story moves square by square. Children and adults can both follow it and enjoy the wordplay, and it reads aloud well.