Harrison 1
The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (Reader Response Criticism)
A story of a young man’s quest to manhood is told in the classic poem, The Jabberwocky,
by Lewis Carroll. Although there are many words used throughout the poem that may not seem
to make absolute sense, they play a part in the story that Carroll tells us through seven stanzas. It
is written in iambic tetrameter with an ABAB/CDCD rhyme scheme throughout its entirety; the
last stanza is an exact duplicate of the first. Everyone can draw similarities from this poem and
apply it to their own lives in various ways as they work to overcome the challenges life graces
us.
To start off, we will look at the words that may be seen as nonsense to us and how we can
relate them to our lives. As previously stated, this poem is about a young man’s journey to
manhood. Throughout our lives, we have experiences that often times do not make sense to us at
the times we go through them. We, as the readers, find the words from the poem like, “uffish” or
“frumious” are a representation of these times in our lives. With my experiences, there are
moments where I look back upon them and think to myself, “Why did these happen to me? What
did I have to gain from them?” If we analyze those words, or those experiences in our lives, we
discover the meanings to them and are better able to understand what they have contributed to
our lives, and our journey to maturity, or in my case: manhood.
How many times in our lives do we converse with our parents about what the future holds
for us? I have gone to my parents many times to seek further knowledge on challenges that I’ve
faced. Throughout these experiences that I didn’t understand, they were the confidants to whom I
brought my inquiries for better clarification. Our parents warn us of the dangers of life, and offer
guidance on how to confront the challenges they present; they help us see the light at times when
our thoughts are clouded. Then, when we’ve finally figured out the meaning of these events in
Harrison 2
our lives, when we’ve overcome a challenge, our parents are overjoyed.. Like our parents, the
father in the poem expresses the same concern for his son when he warns, “Beware the
Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” He warns him of other dangers
like the “Jubjub bird” or the “frumious Bandersnatch.” These may represent the numerous
challenges that we face. And then when his son has defeated the “manxome foe” he had sought,
he expressed his delight in saying, “Come to my arms my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh,
Callay!” My experiences with my parents have allowed me to better understand this aspect of the
poem
The use of the word, “manxome” in the poem is used to make us see that the foes that we
face in life are undefined. There is no one way to go about overcoming the many challenges that
arise in our lives. There is no manual that gives the correct path we should choose. A “vorpal
blade” is the solution; an undefined tool or answer to our problem that is specific to us. We must
think about the solutions and as we do, the answers will come to us. This is explained in the
fourth stanza: “As in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock…came wiffling through the tulgy
wood…” The boy, as he’s thinking, is given the opportunity to confront the challenge and defeat
it.
We must pay attention to the final stanza even though Carroll simply repeats the first.
This last stanza suggests that in life, challenges never cease; they will continue. We just have to
push on and remain thinking them through until solutions are found.
We can always find the meaning in life if we seek it. If we but think about the challenges
and contemplate possible solutions, we will find the correct one and do as the boy did. We can
take our “vorpal sword” and beat the “manxome foe.”