A Literary Jungle Gym

November 5, 2009

Filed under Jenna K.

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Chapter three is built on a play on words. I don’t think there would be a chapter three if Carroll hadn’t decided to write a whole chapter with pun after pun. Let’s start at the beginning, the name of the chapter, “A Caucus – Race and  Long Tale.” The title itself mentions two instances in the chapter where Carroll plays with words.

The first of which was the Caucus race, symbolizing the competition between opposing political parties. The term ‘caucus’ describes the meeting of leaders to decide on a policy, and the event of a race (where the participants are running in circles) describes the idea that committee members practically ‘run around in circles’ while getting nothing done. In the text (page 31, Annotated Alice) Carroll writes “There was no ‘One, two, three and away!’ but they began running when they liked and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over.” This very much describes the reality of politics. The way in which politicians continue in their ‘race’ even when it is not a legitimate, official competition.

Later in the chapter, Carroll plays around with homophones such as ‘tale’ and ‘tail’ or ‘knot’ and ‘not’. This word play really doesn’t serve to act as the ‘Trojan Horse’ for one of Carroll’s political ideals, but instead serves to sort of play around with (and kind of make fun of) the English language. By playing around with homophones, the flaws of the English language are brought to the attention of the readers, as well as an instance of common confusion that occurs in everyday life. Alice’s misinterpretation of the Mouse’s words in this chapter are a prime example of what often happens with young children. Unlike adults, they are not able to use deductive reasoning to figure out that the Mouse was saying ‘tale’ not ‘tail’ and ‘not’ not ‘knot’ (that was rather confusing).

To me, it seems that the play on words, such as these, are what makes Wonderland a ‘nonsense’ world. Unlike the ‘real’ world, there is no reasonable thinking going on that comprehends strange metaphors, literary devices, and grammar usage.

In fact, I would almost  say that all of Wonderland is practically mocking the English language. That might be going a bit too far, Carroll may just have been trying to get the girls to laugh because he knew they were old enough to catch the play on words. That, I am not sure of.