The Mouse's Tale
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"The Mouse's Tale" is a concrete poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the novel, the chapter title refers to "A Long Tale" and the Mouse introduces it by saying, "Mine is a long and sad tale!"
[edit] Concrete poetry
Alice thinks the Mouse means its tail, which makes her imagine the poem in its twisted, tail-like shape:
| “ | It is a long tail, certainly, ...but why do you call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this:— | ” |
The poem can be seen here in its proper shape.
[edit] Content
In the tale, the Mouse (speaking of itself in the third person) explains how a cur called Fury plotted to condemn it to death by serving as both judge and jury. "The Mouse's Tale" thus fits into Carroll's recurring themes of the insane trial (found also at the end of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as well as in The Hunting of the Snark) and of predation (found throughout the Alice books and especially in the poems).
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