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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 3: Looking-Glass Insects
Explanation and Analysis—Puns and Wordplay:
Wordplay, including puns, is a motif in the novel. Wordplay often gives common ideas and turns of phrase new and strange meanings, such as the following exchange in Chapter 3:
“It sounds like a horse,” Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small voice, close to her ear, said “You might make a joke on that—something about ‘horse’ and ‘hoarse,’ you know.”
Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, “She must be labeled ‘Lass, with care,’ you know——”
Alice is describing a hoarse-sounding voice that makes her think of how a horse would sound if it spoke aloud. The voice in her ear tells her she has almost made a pun. Before Alice can wrap her head around why the word "hoarse" is an apt description for a horse's voice, someone else makes another pun on the phrase "glass, with care." This phrase might be printed on a moving box full of glassware. By cutting off the "g" at the beginning of "glass," the distant voice is able to turn the phrase to suggest that Alice is a fragile "lass," or girl. Both of these puns rely on coincidence. "Hoarse" and "horse" just happen to sound alike, as do "glass" and "lass." But the coincidences allow Alice to start putting together ideas that may not have occurred to her before. For instance, what does it mean for a girl to be fragile, like glass?
Sometimes, wordplay introduces subtle social critiques into the novel. In Chapter 9, the Red Queen chastises Alice for offering her a slice of mutton:
“May I give you a slice?” she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.
“Certainly not,” the Red Queen said, very decidedly: “it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to.
The Queen is punning on the word "cut." Alice is about to cut into the mutton with a knife and fork, but to "cut" was also a Victorian expression meaning to avoid or pretend not to know someone. Alice has trouble following the joke, but the Red Queen is implying that if it is rude to avoid an acquaintance, it is even ruder to literally cut them with a knife and fork. Alice asks not to be introduced to the pudding that comes out next so that she can serve it without trouble. This response reveals that she still doesn't understand what is going on. Mutton is sheep, so the astute reader might be able to guess that the mutton leg is a callback to when Alice met the Sheep a few chapters before. Carroll was writing at a time when people were publicly debating the practice of vivisection, or surgical research on living animals. Carroll was opposed to the practice. Understanding this social commentary adds to the sense that Alice's frustration at the dinner party has to do with the difficulty of understanding all the rules, opinions, and etiquette of the adult world. The world is chaotic, and trying to understand it is not always possible.
Related Themes:
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 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:
Chapter 8: "It's My Own Invention"
Explanation and Analysis—Falling Knights:
The Knights who fall off their horses throughout the novel become something of a motif. For example, in Chapter 8, the Red Knight rides in as though he is going to attack Alice, but he falls off his horse at the last second:
At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of “Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!” and a Knight, dressed in crimson armour, came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: “You’re my prisoner!” the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse.
The White Knight then rides in and, likewise, falls off his horse. The Knights argue about who is going to take Alice, but it is difficult for Alice to see them as very threatening, given their inability to stay in their saddles. The motif is a joke about the game of chess. In chess, Knights can only travel in an "L" shape, two squares in one direction and one in a perpendicular direction. The Knights ride toward Alice, but according to the rules of chess, they have no choice but to veer sideways at the last second.
The Knights' last-second tumbles are funny, but as with most of Carroll's "nonsense," they also have deeper implications within the novel. Alice's progress across the chess board is going to turn her from a Pawn into a Queen. In other words, it is going to help her grow up into a powerful adult who is free to make her own choices. As she travels across the board, then, she must learn and adhere to the rules of chess—that is, the rules of the adult world—even if they sometimes don't make perfect sense.
Related Themes:
Chapters 9-10: Queen Alice; Shaking
Explanation and Analysis—Puns and Wordplay:
Wordplay, including puns, is a motif in the novel. Wordplay often gives common ideas and turns of phrase new and strange meanings, such as the following exchange in Chapter 3:
“It sounds like a horse,” Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small voice, close to her ear, said “You might make a joke on that—something about ‘horse’ and ‘hoarse,’ you know.”
Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, “She must be labeled ‘Lass, with care,’ you know——”
Alice is describing a hoarse-sounding voice that makes her think of how a horse would sound if it spoke aloud. The voice in her ear tells her she has almost made a pun. Before Alice can wrap her head around why the word "hoarse" is an apt description for a horse's voice, someone else makes another pun on the phrase "glass, with care." This phrase might be printed on a moving box full of glassware. By cutting off the "g" at the beginning of "glass," the distant voice is able to turn the phrase to suggest that Alice is a fragile "lass," or girl. Both of these puns rely on coincidence. "Hoarse" and "horse" just happen to sound alike, as do "glass" and "lass." But the coincidences allow Alice to start putting together ideas that may not have occurred to her before. For instance, what does it mean for a girl to be fragile, like glass?
Sometimes, wordplay introduces subtle social critiques into the novel. In Chapter 9, the Red Queen chastises Alice for offering her a slice of mutton:
“May I give you a slice?” she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.
“Certainly not,” the Red Queen said, very decidedly: “it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to.
The Queen is punning on the word "cut." Alice is about to cut into the mutton with a knife and fork, but to "cut" was also a Victorian expression meaning to avoid or pretend not to know someone. Alice has trouble following the joke, but the Red Queen is implying that if it is rude to avoid an acquaintance, it is even ruder to literally cut them with a knife and fork. Alice asks not to be introduced to the pudding that comes out next so that she can serve it without trouble. This response reveals that she still doesn't understand what is going on. Mutton is sheep, so the astute reader might be able to guess that the mutton leg is a callback to when Alice met the Sheep a few chapters before. Carroll was writing at a time when people were publicly debating the practice of vivisection, or surgical research on living animals. Carroll was opposed to the practice. Understanding this social commentary adds to the sense that Alice's frustration at the dinner party has to do with the difficulty of understanding all the rules, opinions, and etiquette of the adult world. The world is chaotic, and trying to understand it is not always possible.
Related Themes:
