“Alice in the Looking Glass” by Carroll in brief
In this book, Lewis Carroll, a great fan of puzzles, paradoxes and “flip-flops”, the author of the already well-known “Alice in Wonderland”, sends her beloved heroine girl Alice to another fairy country – Through the Looking Glass.
As well as last time, Alice embarks on adventures thanks to her curious and cute little creature – a black kitten, with whom she plays in half-sleep. And on the other side of the magical mirror face, various miracles and transformations begin.
Alice seemed to be in the same room with a flaming fireplace, but the portraits were whispering about something, the clock was smiling broadly, and near the fireplace Alice saw a lot of small, but alive chess pieces. There they walked and talked ceremoniously, clearly not noticing the appearance of Alice, the Black King and the Black Queen, the White King and the White Queen, the Rooks and Pawns.
And when the girl picked up the king and cleaned the ashes, he was
Alice really wanted to see an unusual country, but it was not easy to do it: no matter how she tried to climb the top of the hill, every time she was again at the entrance to the house from which she came. After chatting with the very lively colors on the language, which grew near the flowerbed, Alice heard an unusual advice: go in the opposite direction from the goal. Having seen the Black Queen, Alice did so and, to her own amazement, met her at the foot of the previously unattainable hill. Then Alice also noticed that the country was ripped to neat cells by hedges and streams – neither
On the fourth line, as predicted by the Black Queen, Alice met two fatties, Trulyal and Trail, eternally arguing and even fighting over trifles. The draconians fairly frightened Alice: leading them to the Black King who slept nearby, they declared that she was only dreaming about him and that the King should wake up, like Alice, and they themselves, and everything would disappear. Although Alice did not believe them, but did not wake up the King and check the words of the twins.
Zazerkalnaya life affected everything. The White Queen, who met Alice, promised to treat the girl with jam tomorrow. Alice began to refuse, but the Queen reassured her: tomorrow, however, never really comes, it comes only today, and jam is promised for tomorrow. Moreover, it turned out that the Queen remembers both the past and the future, and when she screamed in pain over the bloodied finger a little later, she did not even stab him at all, it happened only after some time. And then, in the forest, Alice could not cut the pie in any way and treat the crowd: the cake was growing together all the time; then Leo explained to her that the Looking Glass Pie must first be handed out, and then cut. Here everything happened in spite of the usual logic, as if backwards.
Ordinary objects also behaved in a different way. Egg suddenly in front of Alice grew and turned into a round, lobster little man, in which Alice immediately recognized Humpty Dumpty from the famous children’s poem. However, the conversation with him put poor Alice in complete deadlock, because he even quite familiar words acquired unexpected meanings, what to say about strangers! ..
This property – to interpret unusually, to turn inside out the usual words – was inherent in almost all residents of the Looking Glass. When in the forest Alice met with the White King and informed him that she did not see anyone on the road, the King envied her: no matter, she managed to see No one; the King himself did not see him.
In the end, Alice came, of course, to the eighth line, where she felt an unusually heavy object on her head – it was a crown. However, soon appeared Black and White Queens still behaved with her, like two angry governesses, puzzling the newly-made Queen with her strange logic. And the feast, arranged like in her honor, was also surprisingly strange. The angry Alice lashed out at the Black Queen, who turned up under her arm, began to shake her and suddenly found herself holding a black kitten in her hands. So it was a dream! But whose? The question still awaits an answer.
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