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.
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BetaPrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
In Oxford, England, in July 1863, an unnamed 11-year-old girl receives a book from a man, the Reverend Charles Dodgson. The girl has been led to believe that the book contains Dodgson’s account of her personal history—a history for which the girl has endured persecution from children and adults alike due to her unwavering belief in what seems to others to be pure fantasy. However, the girl is immediately put off by the title: “Alice’s Adventures Underground […] by Lewis Carroll” (1). The girl is apprehensive, given that the book apparently does not reflect the traumatic nature of her experiences; her misgivings only grow as she pages through the book and discovers that the reverend has not faithfully recorded her stories as she thought he would, but turned them into a fantastical children’s tale. Feeling deeply betrayed, the girl runs off, leaving a stunned Dodgson behind. As Dodgson watches her go, rattled by the girl’s violent emotional reaction, the girl’s name is revealed as Alice Liddell.
Prologue Analysis
The Prologue frames and foreshadows the events of the narrative. It frames the narrative as the personal history of Alyss/Alice Liddell and signals how Beddor has chosen to reimagine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
