114 pages • 3 hours read
Frank BeddorThe Looking Glass Wars
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Further Reading & Resources
Tools
BetaPart 3, Chapters 46-49Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 46 Summary
Hatter takes the group of Alyssians to a tavern in Wondertropolis, where they encounter a young girl who was previously present at the Alyssian camp. The girl introduces herself as Homburg Molly and tells Alyss that she can lead her to the puzzle shop. Molly warns the group that the Cut is on their way to the tavern, and she points them to a secret exit into the alley; as the Cut bursts through the door, Molly leads the group to safety in the alley.
Chapter 47 Summary
Molly leads the group to an abandoned puzzle shop, but the group is attacked by seekers, another of Redd’s created monsters. The white chessmen of the Alyssian army come to the aid of Alyss and the others, repelling the enemy while Molly and Alyss enter the shop. Inside, Alyss finds a crystal cube on a shelf and immediately knows it to be the key to the Looking Glass Maze. When she picks it up, the battle scene freezes before her, and Alyss finds herself falling through a looking glass into the Maze.
Chapter 48 Summary
In the Maze, Alyss encounters important figures from her life, such as her parents and her younger self, with whom she plays a game of tag. However, she is also forced to confront old traumas, including her parents’ murder and the feelings of loss and abandonment she felt after their deaths and later on Earth. Faced with the painful memories, Alyss struggles against the temptations of Black Imagination, and, at first, she gives in, choosing to kill a (fake) Redd out of her hatred, causing her to fail the Maze. Refusing to accept defeat, Alyss decides to go through the Maze again—and this time, she is confronted with a scene in which Redd is going to execute her friends if Alyss does not give herself up. Alyss chooses to sacrifice herself, knowing that the important thing is to uphold White Imagination, a cause that her friends can continue to fight for as long as they survive. This is the action that leads Alyss to claim her prize: a white scepter reminiscent of the Heart Crystal. Alyss takes it and exits the Maze back to the battle in the puzzle shop.
Chapter 49 Summary
Alyss eliminates all the card soldiers with the power of her scepter, and the Alyssians rejoice in knowing their princess has achieved her full potential. Alyss projects herself onto the billboards of Wonderland and warns Redd that she is coming for her.
Part 3, Chapters 46-49 Analysis
These chapters encapsulate the linchpin of Alyss’s character arc: acceptance and integration of her identity and experiences. Beddor uses motifs common to a traditional heroine’s journey arc to convey character and thematic development. Alyss’s trials in the Looking Glass Maze model the ‘descent into darkness,’ a plot element in a traditional heroine’s journey wherein the heroine must confront her deepest emotions and emerge transformed. The Looking Glass Maze is a psychological trial; Alyss confronts her losses and her unprocessed emotions. Before she claims her ultimate reward, the scepter, she must face the trauma she has been running from—that of Redd’s attack on the South Dining Hall. When the Looking Glass Maze presents these images to Alyss, she must confront the anger and hate she has harbored deep within herself towards Redd, and all that she has lost at Redd’s hands; but when Alyss initially encounters these things, she fails, giving in to her desire for revenge. This reflects her inability to process her emotions, to integrate them back into herself and use them productively; she is still too focused on the pain this loss has caused her. The second time around, she is able to broaden her focus from just her own pain to keep a larger cause in mind, which is ultimately what leads her to victory. Beddor uses the motif here to symbolize this deep transformation in Alyss, and uses the scepter as a symbol of Alyss’s full imaginative powers, gained through a deep encounter with her own darkness.
The Looking Glass Maze is rich with symbolic figures, particularly relating to Alyss’s identity. Her younger child self represents the self she thought she lost, the repressed Wonderlandian identity. Alyss plays tag with her younger self, indicating an acceptance and re-integration of her past experiences and identity—but the reintegration process also entails the repressed traumatic elements of her identity.
The Maze, as a symbol of identity formation, involves Alyss embracing a communal identity alongside her individual one. Genevieve’s head appears to Alyss before Alyss kills the image of Redd in the Maze, and she urges Alyss to fight against her worst impulses and to remember the principles the Alyssians are fighting for. Genevieve is part of the motif of family, representing the mantle of a greater identity—a Wonderlandian identity, which Alyss must accept as their ruler, and the identity of one fighting for the larger cause of White Imagination. However, Alyss initially rejects her mother’s advice, unable to temper her own desire. This symbolizes her inability to integrate both communal and individual identities. On the second time through the Maze, Alyss is successful because she gives herself to a larger cause to save her friends. This perspective will guide Alyss’s actions in the final events of the narrative, and her character arc here embodies the larger theme of serving a cause beyond oneself.
