Jabberwocky: Motifs | SparkNotes

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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

“’Twas brillig . . .”

A curious feature of “Jabberwocky” is the way the closing stanza repeats the opening stanza verbatim. At both the beginning (lines 1–4) and the end (lines 25–28) of the poem, the speaker informs us:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Readers who encounter “Jabberwocky” in its original context, the 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, eventually learn the basic meaning of these lines. To paraphrase: “It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and strange creatures known as ‘toves’ are spinning around, digging holes in the shadowed section of grass beneath a sundial. Shabby-looking birds called ‘borogoves’ were feeling flimsy and miserable, and the green, piglike ‘raths,’ which had gotten lost, bellowed and whistled.” At the beginning of the poem, the stanza serves to set the scene and establish the fantastical nature of the world where the poem takes place. At the end of the poem, however, the stanza has a different effect. It introduces a question about the opening lines, namely: Did those lines describe the world as it was before the boy slayed the Jabberwock, or after? This kind of circularity is a feature of many ballads, which traditionally open and close with the same lines, creating a sense of timelessness.

Fantastical Creatures

The speaker of “Jabberwocky” references several different fantastical creatures in the poem’s opening stanzas. The most obvious references appear in the second stanza (lines 5–8), where the father tells his son to watch out for three creatures in particular:

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bit, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Although the boy only ever encounters the Jabberwock during his brief quest, it’s clear from his father’s speech that there exist at least two more dangerous foes that may require slaying. The naming of three foes here may be a playful reference to the three monsters faced by the hero of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. In addition the Jabberwock, the Jubjub bird, and the Bandersnatch, the speaker appears to mention three other fantastical creatures in the enigmatic opening stanza. For the reader of Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty offers useful information about the critters that populate the first stanza. According to him, “toves” are bizarre creatures that simultaneously resemble badgers, lizards, and corkscrews. Meanwhile, he defines the “borogove” as “a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like a live mop.” Finally, a “rath” is “a sort of green pig.” All these strange critters help define the fantastical world in which this mock-serious poem takes place.