Week 12 Reading Diary B:

Image Information: Alice Through The Looking Glass. Source: Saatchi Gallery

Looking-Glass House (1 and 2): 

Mirror world as separate world where everything is the same but different. Looks same but it could be different. Wanted so badly to go into the mirror world that the glass melted away. New world much more interesting. Everything personified. Chess pieces alive.

Chess people couldn’t see or hear her. Found the Jabberwocky poem. Pretty but hard to understand. Decided to move on and see more of this world before returning home. 

Tweedledum and Tweedledee:

Two fat men standing so still she couldn’t tell if they were alive. When they did finally speak they spoke in riddles. Characters with old songs. Weird ethics. Refuse to tell her how to get out of the woods and instead recite a poem to her—the longest one they knew. 

The Walrus and the Carpenter:

Not giving Alice and choice in whether or not to listen to the poem.

Personified moon and sun. Sun shining at night. Walrus and carpenter jaded. Wish there to be no sand at all. Cry about it. Coaxed young oysters from the safety of the sea to follow them on the sand. They go on a nice walk and then sit to rest and eat to get their strength back. The oysters were a little leery about getting eaten, but the Walrus and the Carpenter assuaged their worries. Just kidding. They ate them all. 

Tweedledum and Tweedledee (2 and 3):

Walrus felt worse for the oysters than the Carpenter. But the Carpenter ate less than the Walrus. But both ate as many as they could. Alice decided they were both horrible characters. Then they show her the red king who is just sleeping in the woods—snoring like a train and having no cares at all. A lot of weird philosophy what if questions being brought up. Can’t make yourself more real by crying. Can you cry if you’re not real? Nonsense and its foolish to cry over nonsense. Sense that something can happen but not effect you directly, if at all.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum start freaking out about a rattle. One severely angry the other severely weird (trying to fold himself up inside an umbrella). The brothers decide they are going to battle each other. Crow comes and interrupts. Alice hides. 

Humpty Dumpty (1, 2, 3, and 4):

Alice meets and egg. Not a normal one. It keeps getting bigger and bigger—and more human—as time goes on. HUMPTY DUMPTY. Already sitting in a precarious position, balanced on a wall. Immediately offends him. Doesn’t know what to do so she starts reciting Humpty Dumpty right next to him. Names define/explain your shape. She is giving him riddles that are too easy apparently. Adamantly says he won’t fall and that even if he did the king promised to fix him. Grows suspicious that Alice knows this. Placated by the thought that he is in a book on the history of England.

If I meant it I would have said it. One can’t help but grow older. Lots of subject changes. Unbirthday presents. Words that mean what the owner chooses it to mean—neither more, neither less.

But words can mean many different things. Personified words with minds of their own that have feelings and emotions. Pay words for using them? How does he pay them? Humpty can apparently explain any poem ever invented. Obviously not the case. And then Humpty wishes to recite poetry to her as well.