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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Chapter 3: Looking-Glass Insects
Explanation and Analysis—Bread and Butter:
Bread and butter appear together as a motif throughout the novel, foreshadowing the nonsensical dinner party Alice must host once she becomes queen. In Chapter 3, the Gnat introduces Alice to the Bread-and-butter-fly:
“Crawling at your feet,” said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), “you may observe a Bread-and-butter-fly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.”
This creature is a very silly invention, emblematic of a child's imagination. It is easy to imagine little Alice at tea, arranging her bread, butter, and sugar to create a "bread-and-butter-fly." The imaginary insect flies in the face of the rules and etiquette around bread and butter, which according to adults ought to be eaten politely and not played with. Even dreaming about the insect demonstrates Alice's ability to think outside the box of adult rules and etiquette. This bit of nonsense, supplied by the Looking-Glass world, is easy enough for Alice to accept.
Bread and butter are more unnerving later on in the novel. For instance, in Chapter 7, Hatta eats bread and butter along with his cup of tea while he watches the lion and the unicorn fight:
They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other Messenger, was standing watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other.
Alice learns from Haigha that Hatta just got out of prison, which is why he is desperate to eat and drink while this fight takes place. Alice keeps trying to make sense of the whole situation, but her questions about the fight only take everyone aback. She tries to smooth over the awkwardness of the whole situation by asking for bread, like a spectator enjoying refreshments at a sporting event. But even as she uses the bread and butter to finesse the strange situation, Hatta's bread and tea fixation also suggest that Hatta is the tea-drinking Mad Hatter from her trip down the rabbit hole six months ago in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The bread and butter motif shows that Alice has gone from accepting the imaginative concept of the bread-and-butter-fly in Chapter 3 to, in Chapter 7, trying to use adult customs around food to feel less uncomfortable with strange and unusual things that don't make sense.
The bread and butter also leads up to the dinner party at the end of the dream. This party, supposedly hosted by Alice, is a complete disaster. The food she is supposed to serve turns out to be alive (much like the bread-and-butter-fly), as do a number of inanimate objects that are part of a customary table setting. Alice does her best to play "Queen," doing everything she knows how to do to be a proper and polite host of an adult dinner party. None of it works. This disaster of a dinner party is what wakes Alice up at last. The novel seems to suggest that Alice's attempt to grow up quickly and learn adult rules and etiquette is bound to fail because the adult world is full of just as much nonsense as a child's imagination. Things make much more sense when Alice can simply accept the strange and the unusual rather than trying to be queen.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5: Wool and Water
Explanation and Analysis—Egg on a Shelf:
In Chapter 5, Alice buys an egg from the Sheep in the shop, but the Sheep puts the egg on a shelf behind her and tells Alice that she will have to get it herself. This moment foreshadows the strange encounter with Humpty Dumpty Alice is about to have:
The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said “I never put things into people’s hands—that would never do—you must get it for yourself.” And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.
As Alice walks toward the egg, it gets farther away from her. She ends up walking through the woods until at last she comes upon Humpty Dumpty himself, an egg sitting on a wall. When the Sheep places the egg on the shelf, she straightforwardly foreshadows the fact that Alice is about to meet the infamous egg who tumbles from a high wall.
But there are deeper layers to the foreshadowing as well. For one thing, the Sheep claims that she "never put[s] things into people's hands --[....] you must get it for yourself." This idea that Alice is going to have to get something for herself foreshadows how unhelpful Humpty Dumpty will be when he tries to explain "Jabberwocky." He tells Alice that he will be able to make the whole thing make sense, but he does very little to help her understand the poem better. For that matter, he is utterly unhelpful to her in her journey across the chess board. She doesn't leave his square on the board until after she moves on and interacts with the Lion and the Unicorn. Like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty serves mainly as a distraction or obstacle on Alice's journey.
The Sheep's insistence that Alice must get the egg for herself also foreshadows Alice's eventual realization that adulthood involves making things happen for oneself even when nothing about the world makes sense. Perhaps Alice's most adult action in the novel is waking herself up at the end because she is no longer interested in dealing with the rules of the ridiculous dinner party she is supposed to be hosting. The Sheep's cantankerous insistence that Alice help herself is also a joke about the fact that, unless it really is the Red King's dream and not hers, Alice is ultimately the one in charge of everything happening in the Looking-Glass World. All the strange inconveniences she meets along the way are disruptions of her own invention.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7: The Lion and the Unicorn
Explanation and Analysis—Bread and Butter:
Bread and butter appear together as a motif throughout the novel, foreshadowing the nonsensical dinner party Alice must host once she becomes queen. In Chapter 3, the Gnat introduces Alice to the Bread-and-butter-fly:
“Crawling at your feet,” said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), “you may observe a Bread-and-butter-fly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.”
This creature is a very silly invention, emblematic of a child's imagination. It is easy to imagine little Alice at tea, arranging her bread, butter, and sugar to create a "bread-and-butter-fly." The imaginary insect flies in the face of the rules and etiquette around bread and butter, which according to adults ought to be eaten politely and not played with. Even dreaming about the insect demonstrates Alice's ability to think outside the box of adult rules and etiquette. This bit of nonsense, supplied by the Looking-Glass world, is easy enough for Alice to accept.
Bread and butter are more unnerving later on in the novel. For instance, in Chapter 7, Hatta eats bread and butter along with his cup of tea while he watches the lion and the unicorn fight:
They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other Messenger, was standing watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other.
Alice learns from Haigha that Hatta just got out of prison, which is why he is desperate to eat and drink while this fight takes place. Alice keeps trying to make sense of the whole situation, but her questions about the fight only take everyone aback. She tries to smooth over the awkwardness of the whole situation by asking for bread, like a spectator enjoying refreshments at a sporting event. But even as she uses the bread and butter to finesse the strange situation, Hatta's bread and tea fixation also suggest that Hatta is the tea-drinking Mad Hatter from her trip down the rabbit hole six months ago in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The bread and butter motif shows that Alice has gone from accepting the imaginative concept of the bread-and-butter-fly in Chapter 3 to, in Chapter 7, trying to use adult customs around food to feel less uncomfortable with strange and unusual things that don't make sense.
The bread and butter also leads up to the dinner party at the end of the dream. This party, supposedly hosted by Alice, is a complete disaster. The food she is supposed to serve turns out to be alive (much like the bread-and-butter-fly), as do a number of inanimate objects that are part of a customary table setting. Alice does her best to play "Queen," doing everything she knows how to do to be a proper and polite host of an adult dinner party. None of it works. This disaster of a dinner party is what wakes Alice up at last. The novel seems to suggest that Alice's attempt to grow up quickly and learn adult rules and etiquette is bound to fail because the adult world is full of just as much nonsense as a child's imagination. Things make much more sense when Alice can simply accept the strange and the unusual rather than trying to be queen.
Related Themes:
