Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Through the Looking-Glass, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Identity, and Growing Up
Adulthood and the Adult World
Rules and Etiquette
Sense, Nonsense, and Language
Summary
Analysis
The racket gradually dies. Alice lifts her head and sees that she's totally alone, but the dish from the plum cake is next to her. She decides that she wasn't dreaming, unless everything is part of the same dream. She hopes that she's not in the Red King's dream and considers waking him up, but she hears shouting and sees a Red Knight riding toward her to take her prisoner. He tumbles off his horse. Alice is concerned, but he mounts again. A White Knight rides in, falls off, and they argue about who has the right to take Alice. They agree to fight for her and observe the rules of battle.
That Alice is still considering whether or not she's in the Red King's dream suggests that these kinds of theoretical exercises are fun and worth considering—they're just not worth losing sleep over. When the knights agree to the rules of battle, it shows again that there is some logic that guides this world. Everyone is playing by the rules, even if those rules aren't immediately apparent to an outsider like Alice.
Themes
Literary Devices
The knights hit at each other and Alice escapes behind a tree. She watches to see if she can figure out what the rules are. They're odd rules: if a knight lands a blow, the victim falls off; if he misses, he falls off. The narrator says that Alice misses that a rule is that they must fall on their heads. The battle ends when both knights fall off in this way. They shake hands and the Red Knight rides off. The White Knight declares that it was a glorious victory. Alice isn't sure, but says that she doesn't want to be a prisoner—she wants to be a queen. The knight says that she will be once she crosses the next brook. He's going to escort her and then head back to finish his turn.
Alice's attempts to figure out what the rules are shows that she's still trying to make logical sense of what she sees in Looking-glass World, even as her experiences thus far have made it clear that this is often not a good use of her time. The Knight's explanation that he's going to accompany Alice to the edge of the square and then turn back again plays into the idea that he's a knight who moves in an L shape: he has to make a turn in order to finish his move.
Themes
Literary Devices
Alice helps the White Knight out of his helmet. Without his helmet, she sees that he has a very gentle face. He's dressed in ill-fitting tin armor and has a box strapped to his shoulders, but it hangs upside-down and open. The knight happily says that he invented the box to carry sandwiches and clothes, and he carries it upside-down so the rain doesn't get in. Alice notes that the things fell out and the lid's open. The knight looks upset and pulls off the box as though to toss it, but he hangs it on a tree. He explains that he did it so that bees could make a beehive in it. Alice points out that he already has a beehive hanging on his saddle. The knight doesn't refute this, but she says that it hasn't yet attracted bees.
The way that the White Knight talks about his inventions makes it clear that thinking about things can be fun and rewarding, even if those things are nonsense or ineffective—but pointing this out, as Alice does, is sometimes a pedantic and unwelcome habit that actually stifles creativity. In this situation, Alice again seems as though she's the adult and the White Knight, though older, is a child in need of adult guidance. This shows that adults don't have everything figured out, while kids may be better able to grasp the world around them.
Themes
The White Knight gestures to the mousetraps he has on his saddle to protect the beehive from mice. He explains that he plans for everything and points out that his horse wears spikes around its ankles to protect it from shark bites. The knight asks if he can take the dish from the plum cake and they struggle to shove it into his bag. The knight asks Alice if her hair is fastened. With a smile, Alice says that it's stuck on in the normal way. The knight nervously declares that that isn't enough with the wind so strong and says he has a plan for keeping it from falling off: train it like a vine to climb a stick so it's growing up and can't fall down. Alice thinks this sounds uncomfortable.
The White Knight's contingency plans, especially the spikes to ward off sharks, look extremely childish: in this situation, Alice looks even more like an adult, as she's able to calmly and logically note that there are no sharks to be found (though, it's worth noting that, given what Alice has experienced thus far, it wouldn't be that far outside the realm of possibility to come across sharks—Alice is possibly acting too stodgy and old and stifling her imagination).
Themes
Get the entire Through the Looking-Glass LitChart as a printable PDF.
Alice stops often to help the White Knight back on his horse. She asks if he hasn't ridden much, which offends him. He insists that he's had loads of practice and begins to expound on how to properly ride, falling off several times in the process. Annoyed, Alice says that this is ridiculous and the knight needs a wooden horse on wheels. The knight thoughtfully says that a wooden horse sounds wonderful.
Helping the White Knight back onto his horse is one of the most obvious ways that the novel suggests that Alice is more adult than the adults around her. However, the White Knight's speech on how to ride properly reads similarly to Humpty Dumpty's need to lord his knowledge over Alice, even if it was nonsense.
Themes
The White Knight tells Alice about his latest invention: a way to get over a gate. He says he'd do it by putting his head on the gate, standing on his head, and swinging his feet over. Alice points out that this might be difficult, but this makes the knight look sad. Changing the subject, Alice compliments the knight's helmet. He invented it and he tells Alice about another helmet he invented. It looked like a sugarloaf, so he didn't have far to fall. Another knight stole it. At this, the White Knight looks so sad that Alice tries extra hard to suppress laughter. The knight tells her how he got that helmet back and how it got stuck, saying that it was stuck on his head as fast as lightning. He brushes Alice off when she points out that he's referring to a different kind of fastness.
Especially since Alice spends most of this exchange trying not to laugh, it reminds the reader that language and creativity can be fun and humorous—even if, in practice, suggestions like the White Knight's are wildly out of touch with reality. However, being able to consider these possibilities, the novel suggests, makes life richer. People who try to suppress this kind of thinking (like Alice, in this case) are shutting themselves off from a world in which anything can happen—a world that Carroll suggests is most present for children.
Themes
As the White Knight says this, he falls off headfirst into a ditch. He continues to talk about fastness as Alice drags him out of the ditch by his feet. Alice asks how he can keep talking in such a state, which surprises the knight—he declares that his mind works no matter where his body is, and he invents more when he's upside-down. He shares that the smartest thing he's ever done was inventing a new pudding during the meat course at dinner. Alice is impressed, thinking that the pudding was cooked by the time they were ready for dessert, but this isn't the case. He never cooked the pudding but it's still clever: it's made out of blotting paper, gunpowder, and sealing wax.
This pudding in particular speaks to the vastness and the possibility of imagination: with enough imagination, it's possible to create all sorts of things that don't work in the real world, but are still glorious ideas in the abstract. This again suggests that children who think this way have the better end of the deal, as they're able to see the magic in thinking about impossible or silly things, while adults are too caught up in reality and deny themselves the fun of thinking imaginatively.
Themes
Alice and the White Knight reach the end of the wood and the knight says he needs to leave her. Alice is deep in thought about the unappetizing pudding, which makes the knight think she's sad. He offers to sing her a long but beautiful song. The name of it is "Haddock's Eyes." Alice tries to act interested and asks if that's the name of the song. This annoys the knight; the name is "The Aged Aged Man." Alice tries to recover from this blunder, but the knight says that the song is called "Ways And Means," but it really is "A-sitting On A Gate." Alice is thoroughly confused, but watching the knight sing moves her. Though the knight insists he made up the tune, Alice recognizes it as being the tune of a popular song.
In this exchange, the White Knight appears much more like Humpty Dumpty than he has thus far: he speaks very literally about the poem's title but in this case, this makes it impossible to actually figure out what the poem is called. This indicates that while this kind of nonsense can be funny, it can also make it much harder to understand what's going on in a way that can make things difficult.
Themes
Literary Devices
The White Knight sings of coming upon an old man sitting on a gate. He asked the man how he makes his living. The man talked about selling mutton pies made out of butterflies, but the knight thinks about how to secretly dye his beard green. He hits the man and asks again how he makes a living. The man makes oil and again, the knight thinks of something entirely unrelated, so he shakes the man and asks his question again. This time, the man says that he turns haddocks' eyes into buttons and digs for buttered rolls, and says he'll drink to the knight's health. The knight hears this and thanks him. Addressing the reader, the knight sings that now, whenever he makes a mistake like putting a shoe on the wrong foot, he remembers the man on the gate.
Just as with the other poems that characters have recited for Alice, this poem makes little logical sense—there are no butterflies in mutton pies, and fish eyes aren't ever used as buttons. However, the poem still rolls off the tongue in a satisfying way and it's charmingly silly, making it fun to recite (or in Alice's case, listen to). This shows once again that a poem or a book need not make logical sense in order to be worth reading. It just needs to be fun.
Themes
Literary Devices
The White Knight turns his horse away, points Alice in the right direction, and asks her to wave him off. Alice does as she's told and thanks the knight for his song. When he's gone, Alice leaps over the brook into the Eighth Square and flops down on a soft lawn. She realizes there's something on her head. She lifts it off and sees that it's a golden crown.
Getting the crown symbolizes Alice's shift to a version of adulthood. Being surprised by it suggests that adulthood is something that catches people by surprise, and the people who find themselves wearing the proverbial crown are often, as Alice is, still just children.
Themes
