Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

“Jabberwocky” is Lewis Carroll’s nonsense ballad about a young hero who slays a monster called the Jabberwock, first published in Through the Looking-Glass in December 1871. Its 28 lines in seven stanzas are packed with invented words such as “brillig,” “slithy,” and “vorpal,” yet the story is easy to follow, and two of its coinages, “chortle” and “galumph,” are now ordinary English.

Our reading is that the poem shows where meaning lives. Carroll puts his nonsense in the scenery and the monsters but tells most of the action in plain English, so the grammar carries the plot. And because the last stanza repeats the first word for word, the hero’s victory leaves the strange world exactly as he found it.

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

In a strange landscape of slithy toves and mimsy borogoves, a father warns his son about three dangerous creatures, above all the Jabberwock. The son takes his vorpal sword, searches for a long time, and stops to think under the Tumtum tree, just as the Jabberwock comes burbling through the wood toward him. He kills it with a few quick strokes, cuts off its head, and carries it home, where his father hugs him and laughs for joy. The poem then closes with its opening stanza, as though nothing had happened.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice finds the poem in a book printed backward and reads it by holding it up to a mirror. She admits it fills her head with ideas she can’t quite name, which is exactly the effect Carroll wanted.

The Poem

The text below follows the first edition of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (Macmillan, 1872), where the poem appears in chapter 1, “Looking-Glass House.”

’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.

Background

Carroll wrote the opening stanza more than 15 years before the rest of the poem. In 1855, at age 23, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson set it down in Mischmasch, a handwritten magazine he made for his brothers and sisters at the family home in Croft-on-Tees, under the title “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” It was spelled in mock-medieval style (“Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves”) and came with a solemn glossary and a “literal” translation in which badgers scratch holes in a hillside, parrots are unhappy, and turtles squeak.

The full poem appeared in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, published by Macmillan in December 1871 with 1872 on the title page. Local tradition holds that Carroll wrote the remaining stanzas while staying with relatives at Whitburn, near Sunderland. In chapter 1, Alice finds the poem printed in mirror writing and has to hold it up to a looking-glass to read it, and in chapter 6, Humpty Dumpty explains the hard words of the first stanza, introducing the term “portmanteau” for two meanings packed into one word.

John Tenniel’s drawing of the Jabberwock was first planned as the book’s frontispiece. Carroll worried that it was too frightening for young readers, moved it into the text, and put the White Knight at the front instead. In the preface to The Hunting of the Snark (1876), a poem that borrows the Jubjub bird and the Bandersnatch, Carroll returned to his theory of portmanteau words, using “frumious” (fuming and furious) as his example.

Analysis and Themes

Most readers meet “Jabberwocky” as a puzzle to be decoded. We read it as an experiment in how little vocabulary a story needs, and in what happens when a heroic quest is dropped into a world that refuses to be changed by it.

The Plot Lives in the Plain Words

Alice sums the poem up perfectly: “somebody killed something.” She can tell that much because Carroll keeps the working parts of English intact. The articles, pronouns, and prepositions are ordinary, and so are most of the verbs that move the story: took, sought, rested, stood, came, left, and went. The invented words sit in the slots where nouns and adjectives belong, and the grammar tells us what kind of thing each one must be. Slithy toves are clearly creatures, since they gyre and gimble, and a vorpal sword is clearly a sword worth having.

Strange Words for a Strange Country

The nonsense is not spread evenly. It thickens around the places and creatures the son has never met: the manxome foe, the Tumtum tree, the tulgey wood, and the monster that comes whiffling and burbling out of it. When the fighting starts, the language turns almost childishly plain. “One, two! One, two!” is how a child counts blows, and the hero seems to have no time for fancy words. Carroll uses invented language the way a traveler’s tale uses foreign place names, to tell us we are a long way from home.

A Victory That Changes Nothing

The father’s cry of “O frabjous day!” is the emotional peak of the poem, and then the opening stanza returns word for word. The toves are still gyring, the borogoves are still mimsy, and the monster’s death has not moved the landscape an inch. Read as a parody of heroic ballads, the frame stanza is the punchline: in a nonsense country, even the greatest deed is swallowed back into the scenery.

Humpty Dumpty, the First Critic

Carroll built a warning about interpretation into the book itself. The first character to explain the poem is Humpty Dumpty, who boasts that he can explain every poem ever invented and plenty that haven’t been invented yet. He glosses only the first stanza, with total confidence, and some of his definitions contradict the ones Carroll gave in Mischmasch, where a rath was a kind of land turtle rather than a green pig. Not long after Alice leaves him, he has his great fall. Anyone who claims to own the final meaning of “Jabberwocky” is sitting on the same wall.

Form and Technique

“Jabberwocky” has 28 lines in seven quatrains, rhymed ABAB. It borrows the shape of the English ballad but stretches it: the first three lines of each stanza are iambic tetrameter, with four beats, and the fourth line drops to three. Line 5, “be-WARE the JAB-ber-WOCK, my SON!,” shows the full line, and line 8, “the FRU-mious BAN-der-SNATCH!,” shows the shortened close.

The first and last stanzas are identical, which gives the poem an envelope structure, and the father’s speeches in stanzas 2 and 6 frame the son’s quest inside it. The roughest line in the poem is line 4, “And the mome raths outgrabe,” where heavy stresses crowd together and give the nonsense a clumsy, Old English weight.

Carroll saves his sound effects for the fight. Line 17 rhymes within itself (“two,” “through,” and “through”), line 19 does the same with “dead” and “head,” and line 23 with “day” and “Callay,” so the climax rings like a chant. Onomatopoeia such as “snicker-snack” and “burbled” lets us hear what we cannot quite picture.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry most of the poem’s fame.

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

Lines 1 to 4

Ten of the stanza’s 23 words are Carroll’s inventions, yet the grammar is so ordinary that it reads like a real description of a real evening. It is also the stanza Humpty Dumpty explains, and the one that returns to close the poem.

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.

Lines 17 to 20

The kill takes four lines and a child’s counting rhyme. The internal rhymes speed everything up, and “galumphing,” usually explained as a blend of “gallop” and “triumphant,” captures the bouncing pride of a boy carrying home a head.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

Lines 21 to 24

The father’s joy spills over into words that are nothing but sound. “Chortled,” Carroll’s mix of “chuckle” and “snort,” is now in every English dictionary.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem’s seven stanzas.

The poem’s real subject is language. It shows that sound, grammar, and context can carry a story even when the dictionary fails, and it shows readers inventing meanings as eagerly as Carroll invented words.

Beneath the nonsense is an old story of a son proving himself. He leaves his father, faces danger alone, and comes home to be embraced as a hero, the pattern of countless ballads and folk tales.

Carroll treats that heroic pattern with affection and mischief. The swift, almost bloodless kill and the returning frame stanza gently mock the grandeur of epic monster-slaying.

Above all, the poem is play. It began as a family joke in Mischmasch, and it still invites readers to say its words aloud, argue over their meanings, and make up their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Jabberwocky.”

What Is a Jabberwocky?

Strictly speaking, “Jabberwocky” is the name of the poem, and the monster in it is the Jabberwock. The poem gives only glimpses of the creature: jaws that bite, claws that catch, and eyes of flame. John Tenniel’s illustration shows it as a scaly, winged beast with long claws, whiskers, and a buttoned waistcoat.

What Is the Poem “Jabberwocky” About?

It is about a young man who hunts down and kills a monster called the Jabberwock, then returns home to his delighted father. Carroll tells this simple heroic story in a mix of real and invented words, so the poem is also about how language makes sense even when we don’t know what the words mean.

When Was “Jabberwocky” Written?

Lewis Carroll wrote the first stanza in 1855 and completed the poem by 1871. The opening appeared in 1855 in Mischmasch, his family’s homemade magazine, and the complete poem was published in Through the Looking-Glass in December 1871.

How Many Words in “Jabberwocky” Are Made Up?

About two dozen, depending on how you count. Words such as “brillig,” “slithy,” “frabjous,” and “vorpal” are Carroll’s inventions, while “gyre,” “beamish,” and “burbled” already existed in English. A few of his coinages, including “chortle” and “galumph,” have since become real words.

Does Alice Fight the Jabberwock in the Book?

No. In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice only reads the poem and later hears Humpty Dumpty explain its first stanza, and no one in the book fights the Jabberwock. The idea of Alice slaying it comes from Tim Burton’s 2010 film Alice in Wonderland.

Glossary

Humpty Dumpty’s explanations in chapter 6 of Through the Looking-Glass and Carroll’s own later notes supply most of these meanings.

• brillig (line 1): Four o’clock in the afternoon, the time when you begin broiling things for dinner, according to Humpty Dumpty.
• slithy (line 1): Lithe and slimy; Humpty Dumpty’s first example of a portmanteau word.
• toves (line 1): Creatures something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews, which nest under sundials and live on cheese.
• gyre (line 2): To go round and round like a gyroscope.
• gimble (line 2): To make holes like a gimlet.
• wabe (line 2): The grass plot around a sundial.
• mimsy (line 3): Flimsy and miserable.
• borogoves (line 3): Thin, shabby-looking birds with their feathers sticking out all round, like a live mop.
• mome (line 4): Possibly short for “from home,” meaning the raths had lost their way; even Humpty Dumpty isn’t sure.
• raths (line 4): A sort of green pig.
• outgrabe (line 4): Made a noise between bellowing and whistling, with a sneeze in the middle.
• frumious (line 8): Fuming and furious, as Carroll explained in the preface to The Hunting of the Snark.
• vorpal (line 9): Unexplained; Carroll wrote that he couldn’t account for it, or for “tulgey” in line 15.
• uffish (line 13): In a letter, Carroll said it suggested a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish.
• galumphing (line 20): Moving in a clumsy, bouncing, triumphant way; usually explained as a blend of “gallop” and “triumphant.”
• beamish (line 22): Shining or radiant, an old English word Carroll brought back into use.
• chortled (line 24): Laughed with glee; a blend of “chuckle” and “snort.”

In Popular Culture

The poem has been sung, animated, and filmed many times.

In Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951), the Cheshire Cat, voiced by Sterling Holloway, sings the poem’s first stanza.

Jan Švankmajer’s 1971 Czechoslovak short film Jabberwocky sets a reading of the poem against surreal stop-motion animation.

The Scottish singer Donovan set the poem to music on his 1971 album H.M.S. Donovan.

Terry Gilliam’s first solo film as director, Jabberwocky (1977), stars Michael Palin as a cooper’s apprentice who ends up hunting the monster in a medieval kingdom.

In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), the Jabberwocky, voiced by Christopher Lee, is the monster a grown-up Alice must slay with the vorpal sword.

Related Poems

If you enjoyed “Jabberwocky,” these poems share its nonsense, its ballad form, or its heroic subject.

• The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll: Another nonsense ballad from Through the Looking-Glass, recited to Alice by Tweedledee.
• You Are Old, Father William by Lewis Carroll: Carroll’s comic parody of a moral poem, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
• The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear: The best-known poem by the other great Victorian master of nonsense, with its own invented word, “runcible.”
• La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats: A ballad of a knight in a strange landscape, with a clipped final line in every stanza.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson: Victorian heroism played straight, a useful contrast to Carroll’s mock-heroic quest.