Why I Love "Jabberwocky"

Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, published in 1872 in Through the Looking-Glass: What Alice Found There, is a whimsical poem about an adventurer.  In the poem, nonsense words are used as easily as if they were being substituted for real words.  The poem follows an ABAB rhyme scheme and is in iambic pentameter.  Interestingly, although the poem is full of imaginary words, there are only two stanzas (both of which are the same) wherein Carroll repeatedly uses those imaginary words to rhyme.  There is one occasion of an imaginary word rhyming with a real word, and in that case, the imaginary word ends with a familiar English sound, “snatch.”
 "Beware the Jabberwock, my son
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
   He chortled in his joy.

   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

   The frumious Bandersnatch!"

In one later verse, Carroll refuses to rhyme two lines:

Carroll introduces in his poem a number of neologisms, such as “chortle,” which has become an acceptable English word.  “Chortle,” in addition to being a neologism, seems to be a blend of two previously-existing English words: “chuckle” and “snort.”  Several of the other nonsense words in “Jabberwocky” seem to also consist of two or three other words, such as “frumious,” which may be a blend of “furious” and “fuming,” and “frabjous,” which may consist of “fabulous,” “joyous,” and “fair.”

The only two stanzas wherein Carroll repeatedly uses his nonsense words to rhyme are the first and last stanzas, which are the same.  This could have a multitude of meanings; the repetition of the stanza may imply a sort of frame narrative; the lack of change may indicate that killing the Jabberwocky was completely meaningless and did nothing to change the grand scheme of things.  It might also simply be a way to begin and end an escapade in imaginary English.

Although Dr. Saussure’s concepts of the signified and the signifier weren’t popularized until after the publication of Through the Looking-Glass and there is little to connect structural linguistics with “Jabberwocky,” it is still interesting to look at the poem as a statement on the disconnect between signified and signifier.  Carroll seems to have had conflicted concepts of what some of his words meant; although he left some notes as to what these words referred to, these notes often contradicted each other.  This leads to some interesting questions about what I would like to call unassigned signifiers, or sounds with no meaning attached.  Do we make meaning for them? Is it arbitrary?

In addition to the questions “Jabberwocky” poses in terms of linguistics and analysis, I love this poem because it’s frickin’ awesome and I like poems that are just plain fun.