What Is Jabberwocky About

In “A Barred Owl”, Wilbur uses certain words and phrases to convey a dark, then humorous tone in the first stanza, then transitions back in the second stanza. The poem begins with a

In the first half of the passage, the author portrays the creature as a baby by creating a disoriented tone through the use of obscure diction and childlike imagery in order to express the creature’s bewilderment and lack of comprehension at the beginning of his life. The creature mentions how his earliest memories are “confused and indistinct”, that he remembers them with “considerable difficulty”, similar to how adults have a difficult time recounting

     In the fifth and final stanza the speaker talks about trying to kill the old clever woodchuck

The son at first calls his father “baba”, a symbol of both mutual respect and a childlike viewpoint of his father, suggesting he looks up to him as a person. However, he later mockingly calls him a “god”, making fun of his so called authority as his father. Then, right at the end of the poem, he reverts back to his childish ways, calling him “baba” once more, even begging him to “please” read him another story. This shift from respect, to anger, then back to respect represents the circular nature of growing up. While one learns to rebel as they get older, their anger and hostility is replaced with that same wonder and admiration as there existed in the beginning. Even though the son loses respect for his father, he is able to gain it back through his life experience in growing up, furthering the fact that with maturation comes both positive and negative reverberations hand in hand.

In “A Barred Owl,” Wilbur adopts a playful tone through rhyming: “We tell the wakened child that all she heard/ Was an odd question from a forest bird” (3, 4). The rhyme imitates the style of nursery rhymes, creating a joking tone. The playful tone avoids seriousness and weakens the horror of the owl, which contributes to the poem’s style like a nursery rhyme. Wilbur also euphemizes the owl to help create a nursery style. He does not represent the horrible creature of an owl as a carnivore with sharp claws that hunts during the night, but euphemizes it as a “forest bird” (Wilbur 4). The owl’s representation as a safe forest bird refers its figure to the enthusiastic birds with heavenly sounds in cartoons and story books, which often help the protagonist to overcome difficulties and dangers. Referring to nursery imageries of birds, the euphemism contributes to the poem’s style as a nursery rhyme. Creating a playful tone and a nursery style, Wilbur uses rhymes and euphemism to “domesticate fear” (Wilbur

Another aspect to this poem that is very important would be the figurative language. The author uses a lot of similes and metaphors throughout further illustrate this father’s ridiculous ways. The speaker uses the simile “snaked like dragons” to describe the fire engines, this was a good choice in comparison because when you think of a dragon you automatically think of bright fires and then when you continue on the thought you think of their crouched down tiptoes

It is apparent from the first line of the poem that author is in a state of overriding fear travelling through the unknown: likening the road to an “old snake shedding its skin.” A snake is a clear representation of childhood fear and youthful paranoia, due to its intimidating nature. Walcott compares the path to a snake because he fears it just like a snake, to him the path is daunting and potentially deadly at first. The author not only compares the road to a snake but a snake shedding its skin. This paints a grotesque image for readers and illustrates how he views his initial journey with anything but enthusiasm. The author is in the unfamiliar wilderness searching for not only the storyteller’s house but himself. His state of childhood terror is only counterbalanced by his encounter with the storyteller.

Tone- Jabberwocky appears to have a somewhat humorous tone, considering the nonsensical words used, the brevity of the story, and lack of moral. There is no issue or theme addressed that can be applied as an allegory, unlike The Lorax. However, the entire story of the Lorax is rather darker and more applicable in real life, and the tone is both a call to action for the readers and also rather accusatory towards large factories and companies. However, the Jabberwocky appears to have no clear accusations or calls to action and is a vivid contrast to the dark tone of The Lorax. The Jabberwocky poem’s tone is rather ironic, because it presents a usually serious topic (Defeating a vicious beast) with nonsensical baby words, which makes the author’s intent rather humorous. The quote below showcases an action scene with these nonsense words, which changes the tone from serious too rather humorous.

With the use of imagery, the poet communicates to the reader the emotional bond between the father and his son. In the first stanza of the poem, the he illustrates a clear picture between the son and the father. "The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy But I hung on like death Such waltzing was not easy." the poet is saying that the father may not be the best father in the world with his breath smelling like whiskey, but despite that, the son hangs on like death. The simile the poet

natural world is imagery. Imagery means to use figurative language to represent objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses. It is one of the most important devices in “Jabberwocky”. Without using imagery, the poem can be boring, not interesting, and not even exiting. This literary device is based on visual images. The example of an imagery could be this line: “He took his vorpal sword in hand…”(Carroll, 9) The action in this line is that the boy is taking out his sword, he is getting ready to fight with the natural world, with the Jabberwock. You can clearly imagine picture in your head how boy is taking out his “vorpal sword”. Another example of an imagery is this stanza: “The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame/ Came whiffling through the tulgey wood/ And burbled as it came!”(Carroll, 14-16). There is a clear image of scary monster that wants to attack. Especially notice the words “eyes of flame”, “whiffling”, and “burbled”, without them image would be represented bad. Lewis Carroll uses a lot of imagery to represent the theme of “Jabberwocky”. This vivid imagining of boy fighting with the beast helps the reader in picturing human against natural

Many poems have concepts that can be hard to grasp due to complex metaphors, figurative language, and forms of diction. Lewis Carroll takes this struggle of comprehension to an entire new level in The Jabberwocky. Although a simple story of a boy slaying a foul creature, it is formatted in a way that traps the reader inside of the nonsensical imagination of Carroll. It does not take close inspection to realize that the word choices throughout are a bit unorthodox. It does, however, take an out-of-the-box mindset to fully appreciate the imagery at work in this poem. It is proven in The Jabberwocky that words do not have to be proper in meaning or pre-existent to portray ideas.

In the poem, I get a sense that there is no bond, like my father and I have which leads to confusion in the narrator's life. For instance, in line eight when he says, "I would slowly rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of the house"(8-9), this gives me a strong sense of sadness, for him because I feel that he is greatly deprived of what every child should have a good role model as a father, and someone to look up to. “Speaking Indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold”(10-11) is saying that they really did not know how to communicate with each other. I feel that the boy will regret not having and knowing what it is that makes you who you are, and may never get a chance to have and hold a special bond with his father and having a relationship with a person that can not be held with anyone else. This would bring an enormous amount of sadness to my life had I not had my Dad there to guide and protect me, when I could have used tremendous support and security.

The Jabberwocky started off as a land of strife, under constant threat of the creature of nightmare. The savior of the story, a boy, challenged the Jabberwocky and won! He relinquished the land of the beast, and along with it, the negative effects on the commoners. Then everyone was happy and all was well. The Lorax and the Jabberwocky both share similar moods and plots, but they are rearranged to accommodate the goals of the

This poem was written from the point of view of Christopher Robin and his make-believe adventures with Pooh. The quote “‘Let’s frighten the dragons’ I said to Pooh. /‘That’s right,’ said Pooh to Me.”

4. The whole poem has an apostrophe. The Jabberwock is a metaphor for the despair of having to continually count meters and create rhyme. Since the despair cannot do that itself, Carroll created a personification by turning despair into the Jabberwock.