MY MANXOME FOE: THE JABBERWOCK BY AMANDA HEADLEE

26/5/2021

That specific monster, the Jabberwock, haunted my childhood. With every little bump in the night or strangely cast shadow, I thought it was him coming for me. For a time, I feared looking at mirrors, believing he’d pull me through into the Looking Glass World where I’d never be able to escape. To this day I struggle to sleep in a room that has a mirror.

My Manxome Foe: The Jabberwock
By Amanda Headle

The Monster of Film

With eyes of flame, the Jabberwock burbled toward Alice in the parlor of her looking glass home. Alice screamed in fear, begging the monster to go away. The Jabberwock towered above her, roaring in tandem with the din of clapping thunder.

I was a child, a few years younger than the onscreen Alice, when I first saw the 1985 made-for-television film, Alice Through the Looking Glass. The fear that Alice portrayed echoed in my chest as I helplessly watched this monster advance upon her, knowing she would be eaten. Yet, as quickly as the galumphing Jabberwock appeared, he disappeared. Alice was left whole and alive.

Though, this wasn’t the last that we’d see of the nasty beast. He continued to terrorize poor Alice and the other inhabitants of the Looking Glass World throughout the rest of the film. I hid underneath my mother’s crochet blanket whenever Jabberwock appeared, peeking out every so often to see if Alice survived the encounter. To my relief, she always did.

That specific monster, the Jabberwock, haunted my childhood. With every little bump in the night or strangely cast shadow, I thought it was him coming for me. For a time, I feared looking at mirrors, believing he’d pull me through into the Looking Glass World where I’d never be able to escape. To this day I struggle to sleep in a room that has a mirror.

The Jabberwock is a part of me. He spurned my imagination to create monsters where I always had to be on the ready to defend. Stories were dreamt where I was the heroine of my own castle and the slayer of all the beasts.

As I grew in years, I often reflected on the root cause of Alice’s fear. The Jabberwock was her own creation for she summoned him by reading from The Jabberwocky book. Between seeing how she unleashed him and my desire to keep monsters at bay, I conceived the idea that if you wrote down what you feared and never read it, that fear wouldn’t come to life.

I began to write down the monsters that scared me then threw away what I had written. The monsters could never be summoned. Over time, I stopped discarding those written fears and started keeping them in notebooks. I don’t remember why I changed tactics. Maybe I was becoming braver. Over time, those scribbles expanded into very short stories of monsters and humans battling each other for their own survival. Inspiration for my current work has roots in those old drabbles, which all in turn were stirred by the fear and curiosity created in my imagination by the Jabberwock.

For reasons that I cannot explain, 1985’s Alice Through the Looking Glass film—more specifically that first scene with the Jabberwock—is one of my earliest childhood memories. It may have to do with the extreme amount of fear that I felt and the constant worry that the Jabberwock would come for me next. Whatever the reason may be, that memory is still strong in my mind. The Jabberwock is always there, watching and waiting. His presence continues to inspire terrifying dark thoughts that I find solace in writing down with a pen that is my own vorpal blade.

The Monster of Poetry

Nonsense is a blustery use of creating chaos and confusion in writing. It’s alluring and at the same time unbelievable by creating an atmosphere of whimsical discord. Writing nonsense is the embodiment of creativity.

This is silly to admit, but for the longest time I didn’t know that the Jabberwock had a poem written about him. I’d thought he only appeared in that 1985 film. I’m sure I was a teenager when I first read Through the Looking-glass by Lewis Carroll, which contains The Jabberwocky poem. After reading the poem about my childhood monster, his scary visage disintegrated. He became more of an enigma.

The Jabberwocky is one of the most epic nonsense poems written. It is full of quirkiness… and horror. Alice’s response to this poem in Through the Looking-glass is quite amusing:

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—”1

Those two sentences sum up writing horror and dark fiction for me as an author.

Firstly, something is always sparking my imagination and filling my head with ideas. I’m continually asked why that happens. There is no answer or a reason as to why—it just happens. The ideas keep coming and the imagination keeps churning. There is no ‘off’ switch. And most of the time, these ideas are a jumbled mess of images and thoughts that I can’t sort out until it’s in writing.

Secondly, something is killed. That’s horror; plain and simple. A grotesque event affects at least one character in every horror story.

The nonsense of The Jabberwocky adds to the ‘man vs. monster’ theme. There are no definitions for Carroll’s invented language: mome raths, frumious Bandersnatch, slithy toves. The use of those made-up words and the syntax of the poem’s lines creates a foreboding ambience. Horror and dark fiction are the kind of stories that are stitched together by nonsense to elicit fear.

Carroll’s inventiveness in creating his own language of sorts and baking it into a quixotic adventure story is a testament to his imagination. An imagination that’s a marvel and I use as inspiration in creating my own nonsensical universe albeit one that’s quite a bit darker.

Till We Become Monsters
Till We Become Monsters is Amanda Headlee’s debut novel releasing on June 01, 2021. It is a story about consequences for those who believe in the lies that they tell themselves, which results in their humanity becoming their greatest burden to bear. When the Perrin family, along with two friends, are stranded in the winter forests of Minnesota, family dysfunction and jealousy begin to unravel deeply buried secrets. The betrayal by one of the survivors whittles away at the prospect of the others being saved. The moment that all hope is lost, that's when the monsters appear.

https://www.woodhallpress.com/monsters

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and wherever books are sold

With a love of scary stories and folklore, Amanda Headlee spent her entire life crafting works of dark fiction. She has a fascination with the emotion of fear and believes it is the first emotion humans feel at the moment they are born. Most of her work focuses on dark fiction associated with folklore and cosmic horror. The fear of humanity’s insignificance in the vastness of the Universe intrigues her.

By day Amanda is a Program Manager; by night she is a wandering wonderer. When she isn't writing or working, she can be found logging long miles on one of her many bicycles or hiking the Appalachian Mountains.

Website: www.amandaheadlee.com
Twitter: @amandaheadlee
Instagram: @amandaheadlee
Facebook: @authorAmandaHeadle