Jabberwocky

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Jabberwocky is a very peculiar poem written by Lewis Carroll. The poem is infamous for its ‘nonsense’ so the reader must dig deep to find the meaning of the poem. Jabberwocky begins with a father warning his son of the Jabberwock and two other horrible creatures, the Jubjub bird, and a Bandersnatch. These are beasts he may encounter as he adventures to slay the Jabberwock. The poem then describes the son’s journey through the forest and the slaying of the beast. At the end of the poem the son returns home to his father carrying the head of the Jabberwock to prove he has indeed defeated the beast. The father is very happy, shouting “Calooh! Callay!” However, Carroll leads the reader to believe that another beast may come when he uses the same introductory quatrain at the beginning of the poem to close the poem. …show more content…

Carroll uses many poetic devices in Jabberwocky. He uses alliteration in line 6 with “the the claws that catch” and again in line 17, “One, two! One, two! And through and through”. He uses visual imagery in line 14 to describe the monster, “The Jabberwock with eyes of flame.” In line 18 he uses sensory imagery, “the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!” to describe the sound the blade made when the son cut off the head of the Jabberwock. With the use of some made up words by Carroll, the reader is able to somewhat visualize the son’s journey through the woods, but because of the ‘nonsense’ each reader may internally visualize the poem differently from the

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