Although complicated in its language to the point where scholars have produced reams of pages and somewhere between a million and a billion words penetrating into the poem’s deeper, hidden and certainly in some cases utterly unsupported meanings and interpretations, “Jabberwocky” is really a simple poem to summarize. Not the least because its 28 lines are comprised of less than 170 words. And a great deal of those are entirely made up by the poet. And of those, the true meanings of more than a few are still debatable. Here’s the skinny with the goofy glossary translated according to near-universal agreement:
The time is around four in the afternoon and some creatures best described as a combination of the litheness of a badger and the sliminess of a lizard are in the process of boring holes by wildly spinning around. These holes are located on the side of a damp hill. Rumpled birds are desperately unhappy while a greenish porcine type of animal have gotten lost and are making a rumpus with a sound halfway between a bellow and whistle with the additional textural quality of sound kind of like a sneeze.
Suddenly, there rises above the din a warning to keep on guard against the Jabberwock’s jaw and claws, the Jubjub bird a furious creature with some seriously unpleasant snapping jaws called the Bandersnatch. The warning goes out to a son from his father. Having heeded the warning, the son picks up a sword of unknown properties—possibly some kind of metal called vorpal or possibly a type called vorpal—and gives himself a much-deserved rest near a Tumtum tree where he ponders the circumstances as they currently stand. It is while he rests in this ponderous consideration of how things are going that the Jabberwock makes a fearsome entrance from the nearby woods.
A battle ensues and the son’s vorpal sword—whatever that is—winds up slicing through the neck of the beast and disengaging his head from the rest of his body. Holding the decapitated head triumphantly in his hand, the son returns home victorious. Somewhat redundantly, he is greeted with a strange question: “And have you killed the Jabberwock?” Apparently recognizing the needlessness of his query, the father reaches out and embraces his son and celebrations take their due course throughout the land.
Meanwhile, the time is still somewhere in the neighborhood of four in the afternoon and the badger-lizards are still spinning like crazy as the job of boring holes into the side of the swampy hill continues unabated to the soundtrack of green pigs sneezing with a whistle and bellow.
