Youth, Identity, and Growing Up
Though written several years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass picks up a mere six months after Alice's first experience in a nonsensical, dreamlike world. Now "seven and a half, exactly," Alice falls asleep one November day while playing with her kittens, climbs through the mirror over the fireplace, and finds herself in Looking-glass House and the giant chessboard surrounding it. Once Alice gets her bearings and joins the chess game—first…
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Adulthood and the Adult World
Nearly all of the people or creatures that Alice meets in Looking-glass World are adults, at least in some sense of the word. However, none of the adults that Alice meets are especially helpful. Instead, the adults seem caught up in pointless philosophical or logical arguments and silly rules, and in many cases, Alice seems more competent and mature than they are. Together, all of this implies that adults aren't nearly as competent as children…
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Rules and Etiquette
Through the Looking-Glass is framed as a chess game. Carroll includes a diagram and a list of moves in the introduction to the novel, and Alice's journey as a pawn more or less follows the moves laid out in the introduction. While framing the novel in terms of chess might suggest that Looking-glass World is built on a similar foundation of rules and etiquette, Carroll goes to great lengths to show that this isn't…
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Sense, Nonsense, and Language
While not as lighthearted as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass nevertheless occupies the same silly, nonsensical world as its predecessor. Through wordplay, pointless battles, and the fantastical, dreamlike setting, Through the Looking-Glass makes nonsense the norm—while also suggesting that attempting to make sense out of nonsense is a normal, if often futile, endeavor.
From the moment Alice crawls through the looking-glass and into Looking-glass World, the novel asks that the reader—and, for…
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