The Jabberwocky Analysis

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Lewis Carroll’s ballad, The Jabberwocky, is successful in using poetic devices and sound to translate mood, themes, and tones to the audience. Through the use of poetic techniques - including alliteration, a language that Carroll himself has constructed, onomatopoeias, and enjambment, Carroll tells the curious a folk tale of the Jabberwock. Carroll has used a bizarre rhyming pattern through the ballad, where is no particular pattern. Some of the lines rhyme in couplets, and some do not. In the verses which lines do not rhyme in couplets, there are two words which rhyme in the third line. This is challenging for the audience to understand, but pleasant and interesting to speak, as it rolls of the tongue. The descriptive device of alliteration is employed by Carroll, in order to create interest and a certain feel or mood through the sound in the Ballad. When it is read aloud, through the language, it creates rhythm and shows that the poet is capable of using effective alliteration, while still being able to create the mood that they want. Alliteration is used to describe actions, places, or out of celebration, such as, “gyre and gimble...claws that catch...snicker-snack...callooh-callay...and tumtum tree.” Through this use of interesting and descriptive alliteration, Carroll enables the reader to create sounds when spoken that makes a feel that imitates the story. Alliteration is therefore an important and significant device used in the poem The Jabberwocky. Carroll uses a peculiar technique of creating his own language style by taking some words that derive from very old English phrases, and also constructing eloquent words from two or three ordinary words put together. Through this, Lewis Carroll creates a language that represents and enhances the mood of the poem. It fills your head with ideas, only you don’t know what they are. It sits on a thin edge of being
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