At first glance, the poem Jabberwocky - as Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, transcribed in Alice in Wonderland - appears to be pure, incomprehensible gibberish, the a madman's raving about something unfathomable and inexplicable beast. He rambles about "vorpal blades" and "slimy toves" and "frumious Bandersnatches" and "snicker-snack" things, and doesn't apologize once for his fantastical nature. Indeed, a person reading this poem aloud would undoubtedly be considered unfit for normal, sane society. Yet there is something about the poem “Jabberwocky” that has sparked an infatuation with nonsense among young and old. And because Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were not, after all, predestined primarily as children's books, so it should follow that the "Jabberwocky" was, too. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Perhaps even more than the larger epic that engulfs it, this nonsense poem has seen its influence spread across nations and across centuries. Its absurd nature helped spawn the Beatles' perennial classic "Yellow Submarine," just as the Fab Four's "I am the Walrus" was inspired by Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter." JK Rowling paid homage to him in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with Professor Dumbledore's opening speech: "Before we begin our feast, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!" Carroll's influence is also often heard in President Bush's speeches. But what, please, is it about this specific poem, especially since there are tens of thousands of similar and, in the case of Edward Lear's limericks, probably better nonsense poems? Why has "Jabberwocky" persevered in the myth of the fantastic for so long? It is for this question that three different perspectives present themselves: the "Jabberwocky" as written by a mathematician, as written by a logician, and as written by a writer Carroll's role as an eminent mathematician can be seen quite easily throughout the poem if, like so many other things that populate the world down the rabbit hole, you know what to look for. This shouldn't be surprising; after all, most of Alice and Looking Glass reflects several mathematical shenanigans, most of which could only occur in Wonderland due to their inherent impossibility. Nowhere in the real world would a scientist be faced with a sudden inflation in size, let alone a subsequent and even more rapid descent to tiny proportions. No one has ever faced an army of playing cards, and few have ever fallen down a rabbit hole as far and wide as an underground skyscraper. And, with the exception of the recently discovered black hole phenomenon, there has never been anything extraspatial in which the inside of an object was larger than its outside (Clevinger). Let's hope there haven't been too many cases of talking rabbits. But in Wonderland, where reality and impossibility mix, these events can be told and explored in full - despite being told and explored by Alice, who can hardly be considered mathematically inclined enough to understand the logistical significance of the world around her . of the "Jabberwocky?" This is where Humpty Dumpty comes in. In the story, Alice comes across this nursery rhyme entity and finds him rather pompous and arrogant, not even bothering to address her when he speaks (at one point early on he isn't speaking to her, but to a tree). Then, after asking his age,the giant egg criticizes her for being seven years and six months old and not stopping at seven, jokingly adding a dark undertone in suggesting that "With the proper assistance, you could have stopped at seven." Further on, Alice, intrigued by Dumpty's definitions of words, recites the first line of the poem "Jabberwocky": "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy was the borogoves , / And the mome raths outgrabe." Hearing this, Humpty Dumpty launched into a detailed analysis of the poem and the definitions of nonsense words. For example, "slithy" is "nimble and slimy." Furthermore, "... 'mimsy' is 'frail and miserable'..." These words - which combine two distinct meanings into one compact package - are what Dumpty calls "portmanteaus" (Carroll). This does not mean that the words are ambiguous, let's be clear; the ambiguity implies that two meanings exist, but only one is actually in use. A portmanteau, on the other hand, allows both definitions to coexist simultaneously and without conflict. This practice of rationalizing words is not unique to Carroll's views; it has been used numerous other times, most notably in James Joyce's epic Finnegan's Wake, which features tens of thousands of them, including ten-hundred-letter thunderclaps. The nice thing about portmanteaus is that even if the reader has no idea what is being said, you can still get a silent inkling of its emotional context. This is how you can read "Jabberwocky" and, without understanding a single nonsensical word, you can still grasp the meaning of the story, perhaps even understand it all. But logically, this shouldn't be; a person reading even the first previously quoted verse would have to walk away shaking their head in disbelief at the sheer and utter idiocy presented to them. Yet, despite all rationality, this does not happen. Somehow, the brain grasps the inner meanings of these words, inserts them in their place (or rather, enlarges the space to insert them) and ends up drawing remarkably accurate conclusions. These conclusions probably won't even remotely match the original author's intent or lack thereof, but the equation works nonetheless. It's as if the details of the story are decided by the reader's interpretations, but the overall story is defined by the author. The whole scenario can be compared to a "crazy liberation" gone terribly wrong: adjectives fit where adjectives should go, verbs where verbs should go (despite being the proudest and rather capricious word), and for all intents and purposes the prose flows perfectly as correct English grammar dictates (or at least, to the extent that the poetry itself allows). Now, what does this have to do with mathematics, which was previously promised to be somehow connected to the topic? To answer this question you can use a simple, but not really simple, algebraic formula: two plus two equals five. This equation, which has always been favored by both free thinkers and scientists, essentially states that two products combined together can give rise to side effects that transform the whole into something more, or at least different, than the sum of its individual components. . . synergy occurs (Byrne). Just as two drugs combined can produce a third, unintended result, so too can words be paired to create a new, seemingly unrelated word with the added benefit of achieving a subliminal sympathy that tells the reader that, “No, you don't know ". what I mean, but you know where I'm aiming." Therefore, the use of portmanteaus is not only in some specialized elements a substantially more efficient means of writing, but is also theoretically capable of achievinga still inexperienced plan of reader-writer interaction that allows an infinite number of stories to arise from a single source. Mathematically speaking, then, the variable "X" is found in the individual mind and not in ink and paper, just as many artists believe it should be. Having said that, let's now move on to the logical perspective. This view may be derived mainly from what appears to be an innocent exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a word," said Humpty Dumpty, in a rather contemptuous tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean: neither more nor less." “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "what does it mean to be master - that's all." What the giant egg asks, then, is whether or not we are bound to pre-existing grammatical and lexical rules and, if so, what is the justification for binding ourselves to them. Dodgson himself answered these questions extensively in Symbolic Logic. In opposition to the views of the group he nicknamed "The Logicians", he argued that words in language do not actually carry a sovereignty that requires them to be the correct words determined by some greater Entity. Rather than accept this Greek logic, Carroll states that: "If I find an author who says, at the beginning of his book, "Let it be clear that by the word 'black' I always mean 'white,' and that by the word 'black' I always mean 'white', and that by the word 'black' I always mean 'white'. the word 'white' always means 'black'," I meekly accept his decision, however ill-advised I may deem it to be." This acceptance of words as arbitrary things, while probably more correct, ultimately failed to win the day, but it does not deflect Carroll's goal. The idea that a person can use a word in ways not previously implemented is certainly a fantastic idea, but it also opens many doors, many of which Humpty Dumpty ventures into in his analysis of "Jabberwocky." In this poem words are evidently not the masters. This is why the diction is almost impossible to understand; the same can be said for Humpty Dumpty's speech, which rather abuses this privilege. In his article "Alice in the Philosopher's Wonderland," Roger W. Holmes summarizes the topic nicely and succinctly: "Can we... make our words mean whatever we choose? Do we have an obligation to respect the past use? In one sense words are our teachers, otherwise communication would be impossible. In another sense we are the teachers otherwise there could be no poetry" (Carroll). Finally, the final means of telling "Jabberwocky": from a literary point of view, with specificity. regarding the meaning (not, mind you, the definitions) of the nonsense words used. This is similar to the logician's perspective in that it covers the justification behind the absurdity, but differs in one obvious area: whereas the previous argument asks how old words can be used in new ways, this one asks how new words and invented can be used in old ways. Of course, words like “brilliant” and phrases like “Callooh!” Calleh!' have never appeared in a dictionary (although, if they did, I'd like to see that dictionary for further review), so they have no basis for being rationally defined other than through the use of context - which is itself absolutely impossible to define like the rest. So... then look at the definitions of Humpty Dumpty. These are words that had to be invented because they simply don't exist. There are no words for four in the afternoon, so "brillig" had to be written. No beast like the Jabberwock ever was,.123