At first glance, the poem Jabberwocky - as Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, transcribed in Alice in Wonderland - appears to be pure gibberish unintelligible, the ravings of a madman about something unfathomable and stupid inexplicable. He talks about "vorpal blades" and "slippery toves", "frumious bandersnatches" and things that amount to "snicker-snack", and not once apologizes for his fantastical nature. Indeed, a person reading this poem aloud would undoubtedly be considered unfit for a normal, sane society. Yet there is something about the poem “Jabberwocky” that has sparked a craze for nonsense among young and old alike. And why weren't Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, after all, predetermined as children's books, so it should follow that "Jabberwocky" was as well. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Perhaps even more than the larger epic that engulfs it, this absurdist poem has seen its influence extend across nations and across centuries. Its absurdist nature helped give rise to the Beatles' enduring classic, "Yellow Submarine," just as the Fab Four's "I am the Walrus" was inspired by Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter." JK Rowling paid tribute to him in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with Professor Dumbledore's opening speech: "Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Weird! Tweak !” Carroll's influence is even often felt in President Bush's speeches. But what about this specific poem, especially since there are tens of thousands of similar and, in the case of Edward Lear's limericks, arguably better nonsense poems? Why has “Jabberwocky” persevered in the myth of fantasy for so long? It is for this question that three different perspectives present themselves: The “Jabberwocky” as written by a mathematician, as written by a logician and as written by a writer. Carroll's role as an eminent mathematician can be seen quite easily throughout the poem if, like so many other things that populate the world down the rabbit hole, one knows what to look for. This should come as no surprise; after all, the majority of Alice and Looking Glass reflect various mathematical shenanigans, most of which could only happen in Wonderland due to their inherent impossibilities. Nowhere in the real world could a scientist encounter a sudden inflation of size, much less a subsequent and even more rapid descent to tiny proportions. No one has ever been faced with an army of playing cards, and few have fallen down a rabbit hole the length and width of an underground skyscraper. And, with the exception of the recently discovered black hole phenomenon, there has never been an outer space object in which an object's interior was larger than its exterior (Clevinger). Hopefully there weren't too many cases of talking rabbits. But in Wonderland, where reality and impossibility intertwine, these events can be told and explored in their entirety - although they are told and explored by Alice, who can hardly be considered sufficiently mathematically inclined to understand the significance logistics of the world around it. from “Jabberwocky?” This is where Humpty Dumpty comes into the picture. In the story, Alice meets this nursery rhyme entity and finds him quite pompous and arrogant, not even bothering to address her inspeaking (at one point early on, he speaks not to her, but to a tree). Then, after asking her age, the giant egg criticizes her for being seven years and six months and not stopping at seven, humorously adding a dark undertone by suggesting that "With the right help, you could have stopped at seven.” Further on, Alice, curious about Dumpty's talent with word definitions, recites the first verse of the poem "Jabberwocky": "'It was bright, and the slippery toves / turned and frolicked in the wabe: / All the mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.” Hearing this, Humpty Dumpty launched into a detailed analysis of the poem and the definitions of nonsense words. For example, “slithy” means “soft and squishy.” Additionally, "... 'mimsy' is 'fragile and miserable. . . .'" These words – which combine two distinct meanings into one compact whole – are what Dumpty calls "portmanteaus" (Carroll). This is not to say that the words are ambiguous, mind you; ambiguity implies that two meanings exist, but only one is actually used. A portmanteau, on the other hand, allows both definitions to coexist simultaneously and without conflict. This practice of rationalizing words is not unique to Carroll's visions; it has been used many other times, most notably in James Joyce's epic Finnegan's Wake, which hosts tens of thousands, including thunderclaps of ten hundred letters. The great thing about portmanteaus is that even if the reader has no idea what is being said, a silent sense of its emotional context is always available. This is how one can read "Jabberwocky" and, without understanding a single absurd word, one can still understand the story, perhaps even understand everything. But logically, this should not be the case; a person reading even the first verse quoted above would have had to shake their head in disbelief at the sheer and utter idiocy presented to them. Yet, despite all rationality, this does not happen. Somehow the brain picks up the inner meaning of these words, puts them in place (or rather, expands the space to fit them in), and ends up drawing remarkably accurate conclusions. These conclusions probably won't even remotely match the original author's intent or lack thereof, but the equation works nonetheless. It is as if the details of the story are determined by the reader's own interpretations, but the overall story is defined by the author. The whole scenario can be compared to a "crazy release" gone horribly wrong: adjectives fit where adjectives should go, verbs fit where verbs should go (even though they are the most common words). proud and quite capricious), and for all practical purposes, the prose flows freely. perfectly as proper English grammar dictates (or at least, as far as the poetry itself allows). Now, what does this have to do with math, which was promised earlier that it would somehow relate to the subject? To answer this question, a simple – but not very efficient – ​​algebraic formula can be used: two plus two equals five. This equation, long favored by freethinkers and scientists, essentially states that two products combined can give rise to side effects that make the whole thing more, or at least different, than the sum of its individual components. . . a synergy takes place (Byrne). Just as two drugs combined can produce an unexpected third result, words can also be combined to create a new, seemingly unrelated word with the added benefit of obtaining a subliminal sympathy that tells the reader: “No, you don’t know.” what I mean, but you know where I'm aiming. Thus, the use of portmanteaus is not only in certain specialized elements a much more efficient means of writing, it is also theoretically capable of achieving a still untried level of reader-writer interaction which allows an infinite number of Stories emerge from a single source. From a mathematical point of view, the variable "X" is therefore found in the individual mind and not in ink and paper, as many artists believe. That said, let us now turn the page to the logician's point of view. This view can be derived primarily from what appears to be an innocent exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a word," said Humpty Dumpty, in a rather contemptuous tone. "It means exactly what I choose to mean - neither more nor less." “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make the words mean so many different things.” "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "who should be master - that's all." What the giant egg then asks is whether or not we are bound by pre-existing rules of grammar and vocabulary, and if so, what is the justification for constraining ourselves to them. ?Dodgson himself answered these questions at length in Symbolic Logic. In opposition to the views of the group he dubbed "The Logicians", he argued that words in language do not actually carry a sovereignty that requires them to be the correct words, determined by a greater Entity. Instead of accepting this Greek logic, Carroll states that: "If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book: 'Let it be understood that by the word "black" I will always mean "white", and that by the word “black”, I will always mean “white”. By the word “white” I always mean “black”,” I meekly accept his decision, however ill-advised I may think it is. » This acceptance of words as arbitrary things, while arguably more correct, ultimately failed to prevail, but it does not detract from Carroll's purpose. The idea that a person can use a word in a way that hasn't been implemented before is a fantastic idea, of course, but it also opens many doors - several of which Humpty Dumpty explores in his dissection from "Jabberwocky". In this poem, it is clearly not the words that are masters. This is why the diction is almost impossible to understand; the same can be said of Humpty Dumpty's speech, which rather abuses this privilege. In his article “The Philosopher's Alice in Wonderland,” Roger W. Holmes sums up the argument nicely and succinctly: “Can we...give our words the meaning we give them? Do we have an obligation to respect past usage? In a sense, words are our masters, otherwise communication would be impossible. In another, we are the masters; otherwise there could be no poetry. » (Carroll). Finally, the last way to tell “Jabberwocky”: from a literary point of view, with specificity. what concerns the meaning (not, the spirit, the definitions) of the absurd words used. This is similar to the logician's perspective in that it covers the justification of nonsense, but it differs in one obvious respect: while the previous argument asked how old words can be used in new ways, this one asks how new and invented words can be used in old ways. Obviously, words like “brilliant” and expressions like “Callooh!” Calleh! » have never appeared in a dictionary (although if they did, I would like to see this dictionary for further review), so they have no basis for being defined rationally except through the use of context,.123