47 pages • 1 hour read
Lewis CarrollThrough The Looking Glass
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1871A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Lion and Unicorn”
A bunch of footmen and cavalry soldiers come running through the woods. They are all quite clumsy, even the horses, and trip over themselves often. Alice jumps out of their way and then sees the White King. He asks Alice if she saw anyone on the road ahead, and she replies that she sees nobody. He remarks that he wishes his eyes could see Nobody. A messenger appears named Haigha (pronounced Hare), and he reports to the king that the Unicorn and Lion are fighting again.
They hurry to town, where the Unicorn and Lion are fighting in a giant cloud of dust. They are fighting for the king’s crown, as they always do, but no one ever wins. Alice meets Hatta, the White King’s other messenger, who has refreshments of bread, butter, and cake ready for when the fighters take a break. The King calls for a break, as the Unicorn and Lion are tired.
The Unicorn is amazed by Alice, refusing to believe she is a real child: “‘I always thought they were fabulous monsters!’ said the Unicorn. [...] ‘Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too?’ [...] ‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the Unicorn, ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you’” (163). Alice has plum cake with the White King, Haigha, Hatta, Unicorn, and Lion. The Lion also calls her “Monster” endearingly, surprised she is real too. While Alice tries to slice the plum cake for their picnic, the others explain the cake cuts itself. It divides itself among them all, but before Alice can eat, blaring drums go off. Frightened by the noise, she hops over a stream into another square.
Chapter 8 Summary: “It’s My Own Invention”
Alice hurries into the woods as the drums die down to silence. She thinks she must have dreamed of the Unicorn and Lion, but she still has the plum cake dish in her hands for evidence. She knows this cannot all be a dream, and she cannot be the Red King’s dream as the Tweedles told her she was earlier.
Suddenly, a Red Knight barrels toward her on his horse, yelling “Check” and calling her his prisoner. A White Knight comes right behind and challenges him to a duel for Alice. They fight. The knights are clumsy, falling off their horses and hitting each other in odd places. The White Knight wins, but Alice protests she does not want to be a prisoner but a queen. He says she shall be, and he will accompany her to the edge of the wood, but that is the end of his move.
The White Knight is kindhearted, thoughtful, and inventive. He talks to Alice about his inventions, such as a box around his neck for sandwiches, a beehive on his horse, and a stick that stops one’s hair from flying off by sticking it up straight. Alice is curious about his inventions, and they talk easily as she walks beside his horse. The White Knight has terrible balance and keeps falling off his horse. Alice remarks he must not have much practice at horseback riding, but he assures her he had lots of practice. The White Knight keeps pondering inventions, stating it does not matter where his body is, but his mind.
When they reach the edge of the woods, they part ways. The White Knight asks Alice to see him off by waving her handkerchief, and she agrees. He rides his horse back into the woods while she waves her handkerchief. Then, she jumps across another stream to the Eighth Square. She feels her head, which now has a queenly crown atop it.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Queen Alice”
With her crown on her head, Alice meets the White Queen and Red Queen again. They ask her many questions as an “examination” for her to become a real queen like them. They trick her with questions about addition, subtraction, and “logic” riddles. Alice gets temperamental about their treatment, asking if they can complete the tasks they ask, but the queens seem to have all the answers and quick, witty comebacks. The two queens invite each other to Alice’s dinner party that afternoon, though Alice did not know about the party and thinks she should do the inviting. They scold her for not having proper manners but then dote on her. The White Queen falls asleep on her shoulder, and the Red Queen sings a lullaby about Alice taking care of them. Both queens fall asleep on her and snore.
The two queens vanish, and Alice is teleported in front of a large door with “QUEEN ALICE” written in the arch overhead (186). Since there is only a bell for servants and a bell for visitors, she has to knock. A frog answers, telling her riddles about doors when she says he should answer the door. She pushes her way inside to find a gigantic feast with all kinds of guests, including multiple animals.
Touched by the party, Alice sits at the head of the table in between the Red Queen and the White Queen. When she tries to eat the food, such as mutton, the queens tell her it is rude to eat something you have been introduced to. The mutton and pudding talk, so Alice cannot eat them. They all toast to Alice, flipping their cups. The queens suddenly squeeze her, pushing her in the middle. The guests turn into utensils, and the Red Queen turns into a living, tiny doll. As the setting around her transforms, Alice picks up the Red Queen, saying she will shake her into a kitten.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The scene with the Unicorn is another example of the looking-glass world inverting the logic of the real world. To the Unicorn—in the real world a mythological creature—Alice is a rare, peculiar being, a monster rather than an ordinary child. The Unicorn must believe in Alice, just as Alice has to believe in him. They are rare, mythic creatures in each other’s eyes. By showing both perspectives, Carroll again challenges Alice’s and the reader’s beliefs about what is real and what is fantasy. Their interaction also leads to another of Carroll’s most famous lines: “‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the Unicorn, ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?’ ‘Yes, if you like,’ said Alice (163). The dialogue displays a willingness to believe in the impossible, showing that Alice is growing to accept that unexpected, seemingly far-fetched things can happen.
Furthermore, the fight between the Lion and the Unicorn offers another example of a child’s perspective on the adult world. “The Lion and the Unicorn” is a traditional English nursery rhyme that allegorizes the conflict between England, which had a lion in its coat of arms, and Scotland, which had a unicorn. The two nations fought bitterly for sovereignty over the island of Britain, up to and after the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603. Through the Looking-Glass re-imagines the poem as a child like Alice might, without political or historical context, as a literal fight between the titular creatures. That this Lion and Unicorn seem to fight for no reason and to no end once again reflects both a child’s limited understanding of adult conflicts and critiques the senselessness of violent conflict. Though a child’s understanding is limited, Carroll suggests, it can also grasp truths that adults lose track of.
After meeting the Unicorn and Lion, Alice cannot recall in the next square if they were real or not. Her only evidence is the plum-cake dish: “However, there was the great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the plum-cake, ‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all [...] unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream…’” (167). Alice’s inability to discern whether her experiences are a dream—or whose dream they might be—foreshadows Alice shaking the Red Queen and awakening to find that the Queen is the kitten from Chapter 1. She believes Kitty is the Red Queen, a transformed version of herself in the looking-glass world. These thoughts about dreams and the softened barrier between fiction and nonfiction are key foundational components to Alice’s internal journey of accepting and honoring the “impossible” through her vivid imagination and refusing to surrender that imagination in the name of maturity. This focus on dreams and the fantastical also sets the imaginative, whimsical tone apparent throughout the entire novel.
The White Knight acts as a companion and protector for Alice, as well as a representation of creativity (see Character Analysis). He guards her through the woods as a protector and guide. He is proud of his inventions and mental fortitude, influencing Alice to value her mind as a remarkable tool and asset. Though the White Knight perhaps daydreams too much—leading him to continually fall off his horse—his persona shows the high value of the mind. Through conversing with the White Knight, Alice learns that no matter what physical obstacles she faces, she can always rely on her mind: “‘What does it matter where my body happens to be?’ he said. ‘My mind goes on working all the same’” (173). This focus on mental strength is key to the novel since the world is a dreamscape built by Alice’s imagination. Critical thinking and creativity, especially the ability to imagine and envision things not yet in existence, remain an important part not only of Alice’s personality but of the book’s main messages. As an inventor, the White Knight both imagines things that do not exist and brings them into existence. Alice, too, is an inventor, in the sense that she creates the looking-glass world in her own mind. The White Knight being her kindest, most helpful guide suggests that Alice should keep honoring her childhood’s wonder and originality.
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By Lewis Carroll
