The Walrus and the Carpenter

By Lewis Carroll

“The Walrus and the Carpenter” is Lewis Carroll’s nonsense ballad about two friends who coax a crowd of young oysters into a walk along the beach and then eat every one of them. It first appeared in Through the Looking-Glass in December 1871, recited to Alice by Tweedledee, and its 18 six-line stanzas include one of the most quoted lines in English nonsense: “The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things.”

Our reading is that the poem is about good manners used as a weapon. The Walrus weeps, sympathizes, and praises the view while he eats; the Carpenter doesn’t bother to pretend. When Alice tries to decide which of them is worse, the book refuses to let her, and that refusal is the poem’s sharpest joke.

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

Summary

The poem opens on an impossible night: the sun is shining at midnight, the moon is sulking about it, and the beach is empty of clouds and birds. Along the sand come the Walrus and the Carpenter, weeping at how much sand there is and wondering whether seven maids with seven mops could ever clear it away. The Walrus invites the oysters to join them for a pleasant walk and a pleasant talk. The eldest Oyster wisely stays in bed, but four young ones hurry up, neatly dressed, and dozens more follow them out of the waves.

After a mile or so, the two stop at a rock, and the little Oysters wait in a row while the Walrus announces that it is time to talk of many things. Instead, he calls for bread, pepper, and vinegar. The Oysters realize too late what is happening and protest, but the Walrus answers with compliments about the view, and the Carpenter only asks for another slice. Sobbing into his handkerchief, the Walrus picks out the largest Oysters. When the Carpenter finally suggests trotting home, no one answers, because they have eaten every one.

The Poem

The text below follows chapter 4 of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, “Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” as transcribed by Project Gutenberg from the Macmillan edition. Tweedledee recites it as one long speech, so the whole poem sits inside a single pair of quotation marks.

“The sun was shining on the sea,
    Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
    The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
    The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
    Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
    After the day was done—
‘It’s very rude of him,’ she said,
    ‘To come and spoil the fun!’

The sea was wet as wet could be,
    The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
    No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying over head—
    There were no birds to fly.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
    Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
    Such quantities of sand:
‘If this were only cleared away,’
    They said, ‘it would be grand!’

‘If seven maids with seven mops
    Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said,
    ‘That they could get it clear?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,
    And shed a bitter tear.

‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’
    The Walrus did beseech.
‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
    Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
    To give a hand to each.’

The eldest Oyster looked at him.
    But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
    And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
    To leave the oyster-bed.

But four young oysters hurried up,
    All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
    Their shoes were clean and neat—
And this was odd, because, you know,
    They hadn’t any feet.

Four other Oysters followed them,
    And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
    And more, and more, and more—
All hopping through the frothy waves,
    And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
    Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
    Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
    And waited in a row.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
    ‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
    Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
    And whether pigs have wings.’

‘But wait a bit,’ the Oysters cried,
    ‘Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
    And all of us are fat!’
‘No hurry!’ said the Carpenter.
    They thanked him much for that.

‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
    ‘Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
    Are very good indeed—
Now if you’re ready Oysters dear,
    We can begin to feed.’

‘But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,
    Turning a little blue,
‘After such kindness, that would be
    A dismal thing to do!’
‘The night is fine,’ the Walrus said
    ‘Do you admire the view?

‘It was so kind of you to come!
    And you are very nice!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
    ‘Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf—
    I’ve had to ask you twice!’

‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,
    ‘To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
    And made them trot so quick!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
    ‘The butter’s spread too thick!’

‘I weep for you,’ the Walrus said.
    ‘I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
    Those of the largest size.
Holding his pocket handkerchief
    Before his streaming eyes.

‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter.
    ‘You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
    But answer came there none—
And that was scarcely odd, because
    They’d eaten every one.”

Background

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematics lecturer writing as Lewis Carroll, published Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There with Macmillan in December 1871, with 1872 on the title page. It was the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and like the first book it was illustrated by John Tenniel.

The poem comes in chapter 4. Alice meets the twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a wood, dances round with them to music made by the branches, and asks them the way out. Instead of answering, Tweedledee asks whether she likes poetry, and Tweedledum suggests “The Walrus and the Carpenter” because it is the longest. Alice tries to interrupt, but Tweedledee simply starts again from the top.

According to a story often repeated about the book’s making, Carroll let Tenniel choose the Walrus’s companion, since “carpenter,” “butterfly,” and “baronet” all fit the meter. Tenniel picked the carpenter and drew him in a square paper hat. Carroll returned to the pair in 1886, when Henry Savile Clarke adapted the two Alice books for the stage, and wrote new verses in which the ghosts of the eaten Oysters come back to haunt them.

Analysis and Themes

“The Walrus and the Carpenter” reads at first like a cheerful nonsense story with a nasty ending. Look closer and it becomes a small study of how predators talk, and of how hard it is to rank two kinds of cruelty against each other.

A World Where Nothing Works

The first three stanzas set the rules by breaking them. The sun shines at midnight, the moon complains that it is rude, there are no birds because there are no birds, and the sea is as wet as wet could be. This is a world of tautologies and reversals, where common sense has been switched off. It prepares us for the central reversal: the Oysters are invited on a walk by the very creatures who mean to eat them, and they accept, even though they have no feet.

The Walrus and His Handkerchief

The Walrus is the talker. He issues the invitation, promises conversation about shoes and ships and kings, and then, when the Oysters beg for mercy, changes the subject to the view. His grief is real enough to produce sobs, yet he uses the handkerchief to hide how many Oysters he is taking. He is the figure who feels sorry for his victims and eats them anyway, and the poem treats his tears as part of his appetite rather than a brake on it.

The Carpenter Says Nothing But

The Carpenter is the opposite case. He makes no speeches and sheds only one “bitter tear,” over the sand rather than the Oysters. Twice the poem says that he “said nothing but,” and what follows is a complaint about the bread and the butter. He is not cruel so much as indifferent, a man interested only in his meal. His last line, asking the Oysters whether they would like to trot home, is either a joke in very bad taste or proof that he never thought of them as anything but food.

Alice Cannot Choose

Right after the recital, Alice says she likes the Walrus best because he was a little sorry for the Oysters. Tweedledee points out that he ate more than the Carpenter, hiding them behind his handkerchief. Alice switches to the Carpenter, until Tweedledum reminds her that the Carpenter ate as many as he could get. She ends up deciding that both were very unpleasant characters. Carroll builds the moral argument into the book and then leaves it unresolved: the hypocrite and the brute arrive at the same empty beach.

Form and Technique

The poem has 108 lines in 18 six-line stanzas. The lines alternate between iambic tetrameter, with four beats, and iambic trimeter, with three, as in “the SUN was SHIN-ing ON the SEA, / SHIN-ing with ALL his MIGHT.” Only the even-numbered lines rhyme, giving the scheme ABCBDB. This is the common meter of English hymns and ballads stretched from four lines to six, which lets each stanza tell a small scene and still end on a snap.

Carroll uses that closing line as a punchline again and again. “The middle of the night,” “There were no birds to fly,” “They hadn’t any feet,” and finally “They’d eaten every one” all land on the last beat of their stanzas. The first and last stanzas are linked by the same joke shape, “And this was odd, because” and “And that was scarcely odd, because,” so the poem opens with nature behaving strangely and closes with predators behaving exactly as expected.

The dashes do comic work too. In the “time has come” stanza, they break the Walrus’s list into lurching pieces, so his talk sounds grand and goes nowhere. Repetition of “said nothing but” turns the Carpenter into a refrain, and the steady trot of the meter keeps the tone light right up to the moment the Oysters disappear.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry most of the poem’s fame.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.’

Lines 61 to 66

The most quoted stanza in the poem, and a perfect piece of misdirection. The Walrus promises a feast of conversation, lists a jumble of subjects from the household to the impossible, and never discusses any of them. The only feast is the one he is about to eat.

‘I weep for you,’ the Walrus said.
‘I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size.

Lines 97 to 100

Sympathy and selection happen in the same breath. The Walrus’s tears and his choice of the biggest Oysters are not in conflict; the poem presents them as one action.

But answer came there none—
And that was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.

Lines 106 to 108

The ending turns the opening joke inside out. Strange things happened at the start of the poem; this one is not strange at all, and the flat, reasonable tone makes the vanishing of every Oyster funnier and darker at once.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem’s 18 stanzas.

The first is deception. The Walrus wins the Oysters with an invitation, a promise of conversation, and a great deal of charm, and the poem shows how easily politeness can disguise a trap.

The second is hypocrisy. The Walrus’s tears let him feel good about himself while changing nothing for the Oysters, and Carroll makes that gap between feeling and action the poem’s running joke.

The third is innocence. The young Oysters, scrubbed and eager, ignore the warning of the eldest Oyster who stays at home, and they pay for their trust. Readers have long heard in them a picture of children led astray by plausible adults.

The fourth is moral judgment itself. Through Alice’s argument with the twins, the poem asks whether intentions or results matter more, and it declines to give the comfortable answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

What Is “The Walrus and the Carpenter” About?

It is about a Walrus and a Carpenter who invite a group of young oysters on a friendly walk along the beach and then eat them all. Beneath the nonsense, it is a comic story about deception, about predators who use kind words, and about how hard it is to judge between a hypocrite and a brute.

What Book Is “The Walrus and the Carpenter” From?

It is from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Tweedledee recites it to Alice in chapter 4, not in the first Alice book, although many film versions move it to Wonderland.

Who Is Worse, the Walrus or the Carpenter?

Carroll leaves that open on purpose. Alice first prefers the Walrus because he felt sorry for the oysters, then learns he ate more than the Carpenter and hid it behind his handkerchief. She switches to the Carpenter, hears that he ate as many as he could, and decides they were both very unpleasant characters.

What Does “The Time Has Come to Talk of Many Things” Mean?

In the poem, it is the Walrus’s grand announcement that a serious conversation is about to begin, about shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages, and kings. The talk never happens, because he moves straight on to eating. Today, people quote the line, usually with humor, to signal that it is time to discuss something important.

Is “I Am the Walrus” Based on This Poem?

Yes. John Lennon took the walrus for the Beatles’ 1967 song “I Am the Walrus” from Carroll’s poem. He later said he had not realized at the time that the Walrus was the villain of the piece, and joked that he should have called the song “I Am the Carpenter.”

Glossary

Unlike “Jabberwocky,” this poem uses real words, but a few are old-fashioned or easy to miss.

• billows (line 4): Large waves.
• sulkily (line 7): In a bad-tempered, resentful way.
• beseech (line 32): Beg or ask earnestly.
• briny (line 34): Salty, of the sea.
• sealing-wax (line 63): Colored wax melted onto a folded letter or envelope and stamped with a seal to close it.
• sympathize (line 98): Share someone’s feelings or feel sorry for them; here, said by the one causing the suffering.
• answer came there none (line 106): An old-fashioned poetic way of saying that nobody answered.

In Popular Culture

Few Victorian poems have traveled as far into film, music, and everyday speech.

O. Henry took the title of his first book, the novel Cabbages and Kings (1904), from the Walrus’s famous stanza.

In Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951), Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell the story to Alice as an animated musical number, with both twins voiced by J. Pat O’Malley.

The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” (1967), written by John Lennon, takes its title figure from the poem.

In Kevin Smith’s film Dogma (1999), the fallen angel Loki, played by Matt Damon, reads the poem as an attack on organized religion to shake a nun’s faith.

Related Poems

If you enjoyed “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” these poems share its nonsense, its ballad rhythm, or its smooth-talking predator.

• Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll: The other great nonsense ballad from Through the Looking-Glass, which Alice reads in a mirror in chapter 1.
• The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt: The classic 1829 warning about a flatterer who invites his victim in, a poem Carroll parodied in the first Alice book.
• The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear: A gentler seaside nonsense voyage by the other great Victorian master of nonsense.
• Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti: Another Victorian poem in which tempting voices lure the young toward a feast with a terrible price.