Secondary Characters in Through the Looking Glass
Key Secondary Characters and Their Roles
The Red Queen
- Represents authority and strict rules in Looking-Glass World
- Serves as both guide and antagonist to Alice
- Introduces the concept of running to stay in place ("Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place")
The White Queen
- Represents chaos and disorder
- Lives backwards in time, remembering future events and forgetting past ones
- Provides comic relief through her constant transformations and confused state
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
- Mirror images of each other, emphasizing the looking-glass theme
- Serve to:
- Challenge Alice's understanding of reality
- Present philosophical puzzles
- Advance the narrative through their recitation of "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
Humpty Dumpty
- Acts as a linguistic authority figure
- Challenges conventional meaning of words
- Represents the arbitrary nature of language
Narrative Functions
Plot Advancement
Secondary characters in Through the Looking Glass serve multiple narrative functions:
- Guide Alice through the chess-board world
- Present challenges and riddles
- Introduce new concepts and rules of the Looking-Glass World
Thematic Development
These characters help develop key themes:
- Identity and self-discovery
- Language and meaning
- Logic versus nonsense
- Rules and authority
