The Walrus and the Carpenter
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"The Walrus and the Carpenter" is a narrative poem by Lewis Carroll that appeared in his book Through the Looking-Glass, published in December 1871. The poem is recited in chapter four, by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. The poem is composed of 18 stanzas and contains 108 lines, in a alternation of iambic trimeters and iambic tetrameters. The rhyme scheme is ABCBDB, and masculine rhymes appear frequently. The rhyming and rhythmical schema used, as well as some archaisms and syntactical turns, are those of the traditional English ballad.
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[edit] Summary
The Walrus and the Carpenter are the titular characters in the poem, which is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one night when both sun and moon are visible, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon an offshore bed of oysters, four of whom they invite to join them; to the disapproval of the eldest oyster, many more follow them. After walking along the beach (a point is made of the fact that the oysters are all neatly shod despite having no feet), the two titular characters are revealed to be predatory and eat all of the oysters. After hearing the poem, the good-natured Alice attempts to determine which of the two leading characters might be the more sympathetic, but is thwarted by the twins' further interpretation; for example, the Walrus apparently regrets his actions and cries, but mostly because now there are no more oysters for him to eat.
[edit] Interpretations
| “ | "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: |
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Through the Looking Glass, as a story, revolves around a game of Chess, even including much of the poetry recited to Alice. The Walrus and the Carpenter is one such poem and is significant in that it advances the game: the Oysters are pieces on the White side, and the Walrus and the Carpenter are pieces on the Red side, and their "eating" the Oysters tells us that they have "taken" them.
In The Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner noted that The Walrus and the Carpenter is one of the few poems in the whole of English literature to be remembered for its middle verse rather than its first (see right) and also that when Carroll gave the manuscript for Looking Glass to illustrator John Tenniel, he gave him the choice of drawing a carpenter, a butterfly, or a baronet (since each word would fit the poem's meter). Since Tenniel, rather than Carroll, chose the carpenter, the character's significance in the poem is probably not in his profession. Although the two characters were interpreted as two political types in Carroll's own time[citation needed], there is no indication of what they were intended for. Gardner cautions the reader that there isn't always intended symbolism in the Alice books. The books were made for the imagination of children and not the analysis of "mad people".
Many portions of the Alice tales can be tied only to sheer whimsy, and while Carroll's life observations do make themselves obvious from time to time, it is possible that "The Walrus and the Carpenter" is not one of them: Carroll's character the Duchess says in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that "everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."[1]
Beyond its disputed moral, the poem has a parodic aspect, due to its intertext : In its form as well as in its setting, it recalls a long tradition of English popular ballads, notably romantic ones, such as the more elaborate Rime of the ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Walrus and the Carpenter could be read as a mock-epic, turning systematically the uncanny and sublime tone of the romantic ballad into humoristic nonsense : moon, sun, sand, and birds are no longer ominous elements, but only parts of a merely "odd" setting:
"The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly."
[edit] The movie version
In Disney's Alice in Wonderland, an adapted version of the poem is narrated in song and spoken word by Tweedledee and Tweedledum. In this virtuoso performance, character actor J. Pat O'Malley performs all five voices, including Mother Oyster.[2]
The movie version also differs somewhat on the ending, as the enraged Carpenter ends up chasing the Walrus with his hammer for what he has done, apparently because also wanted his fair share and the Walrus had eaten them all up.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Carroll, Lewis (1995). The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works. New York: Gramercy Books. ISBN 0-517-10027-4.
- ^ Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn. Alice in Wonderland [DVD]. Walt Disney.
[edit] External links
- Text of the Walrus and the Carpenter (with illustrations)
- Audio - hear the poem
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