“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English. This poem is made up of Portmanteau words.
Portmanteaus words are two words combined to make one. The poem is supposed to be nonsense because of the usage of meaningless words such as vorpal, Jubjub, mimsy, borogoves, tumtum etc but this nonsense is not considered as an insult.
This poem is written in novel through the Looking-Glass. Through the Looking- Glass is the sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” novel. This book narrates the further adventure of Alice within the back-to-front world of the looking glass.
The poem is written in a humorous, whimsical, playful and easy language that could be understood by all especially children. To summarize the poem one has to think like a child, we have to awake our inner child to understand this poem.
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Logical thinking it is not required to understand this poem as this poem is considered one of the non-sense poem written by Lewis Carroll.
In the beginning of the poem there is a description of an afternoon with nonsense and strange creatures such as raths, miling, jubjub, borogoves. These are dangerous creatures and they make different noises.
This poem narrates a story of a little boy and his father. It is written in simple and gibberish English, some of the words in the poem do not make any sense. The boy’s father tells him about a creature called Jabberwocky. The father asks his son to be beware of Jabberwocky.
Jabberwocky is dangerous creature that has horrible teeth and claws and he lurks in the woods. The father also describes about other creatures’ such as “Jubjub bird” and the “Bandersnatch.”
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The son takes his famous menacing and sharp vorpal sword in hand and goes out looking for Jabberwocky. He searches for long and rest for a while near the Tumtum tree. Later on the boy successfully finds the dangerous creature Jabberwocky, bravely fights with the Jabberwocky and kills him. The boy takes the head of the Jabberwocky and presents it to his father. The father is very happy with his son’s bravery and celebrates.
This poem sounds like a story for little kids. The moral of the story is one should be brave in all the events of life and should be able to get rid of all the monsters i.e. problems of life by the way of fight with them and not by running away from the monster.
This poem holds different meanings for different people, for some it’s a beautiful kids tale, for some it’s a nonsense poem, for some it is a poem that enhances once imagination. The poem ends with the first stanza stating everything is back to normal.