Through The Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll and published in 1871. As before, Alice enters an alternative reality, this time by climbing through the looking-glass hung over the fireplace, and the book’s themes, settings and events are a kind of mirror image to those of Wonderland. The first book begins outdoors on a spring day; the second indoors on a wintry night precisely six months later. The first book uses a deck of cards as a theme; the second is based on a game of chess. Time runs backwards. The poem “Jabberwocky” is printed in backwards type and legible only when read in the mirror. The chess motif figures throughout: the looking-glass world is divided by brooks and streams much like squares on a chessboard. The plot follows the path of a chess game: when Alice meets the Red Queen upon arrival, she offers to make Alice a queen of she can advance to the eighth row. In her journey to this end she has numerous unusual encounters. The plump twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee suggest she is only a figment of the Red King’s imagination. The absent-minded White Queen remembers things before they happen. Humpty-Dumpty celebrates his “unbirthday” before his famous fall. She is rescued by the clumsy White Knight, crosses the final brook and is immediately crowned queen. The Red and White Queens appear, and invite one another to a party to be hosted by Alice, of which she is, of course, unaware. The party disintegrates into a chaotic uproar, prompting Alice to grab and shake the Red Queen violently. It’s game over – the Red Queen has been captured. Alice awakes, and the story ends with the speculation that everything may have been a dream of the Red King.

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