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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BetaPart 3, Chapters 38-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary
Alyss and Dodge return to find the aftermath of the Cat’s attack on the Alyssian headquarters, and they are attacked by Glass Eyes who’d been awaiting their return. Generals Doppel and Gänger and other members of the Alyssian army come to the rescue, and the Alyssian chessmen hold off the Glass Eyes while the generals, Alyss, and Dodge escape to the emergency looking glass portal, where Hatter and Bibwit are waiting. They do not know, however, that more Glass Eyes are already in pursuit.
Chapter 39 Summary
The small group of Hatter, Bibwit, General Doppelgänger, Dodge, and Alyss enter the Crystal Continuum, but they are followed by Glass Eyes, and a battle ensues. During the battle, Alyss is finally able to produce something from her imagination: When she sees Dodge being attacked by a cannonball spider, she imagines a muzzle covering its mouth, which prevents it from dealing a killing blow to Dodge with its pincers. However, the Alyssians are still surrounded by Glass Eyes with few remaining options for defense.
Chapter 40 Summary
Back at Mount Isolation, Redd is enraged when she discovers that Alyss was not killed during the attack on the Alyssian headquarters; but then Redd’s imagination allows her to get a glimpse of Alyss in the Crystal Continuum, and she orders every looking glass in Wonderland to be smashed.
Chapter 41 Summary
Alyss and the rest of the Alyssian group remain trapped by the Glass Eyes in the Continuum, and as looking glasses around Wonderland are smashed per Redd’s order, the Continuum begins to deconstruct around them. Dodge uses Bibwit’s pocket watch to reflect small stretches of road to buy them time, and luckily, they find a single surviving looking glass through which they all can travel. The group emerges onto a smoky, flaming landscape interspersed with streams of lava, and they realize that they have emerged in the middle of the Volcanic Plains.
Chapter 42 Summary
Alyss and the rest of the group work their way across the Volcanic Plains towards the Valley of Mushrooms, guided by Bibwit. They have an encounter with a jabberwock but, thanks to Hatter, are able to escape.
Chapter 43 Summary
Having passed through the Volcanic Plains, the group rests for the night, close to the Valley of Mushrooms. Unable to sleep, Alyss falls into thoughts about her imagination. She realizes that it was so easy for her to use her imagination as a child because she never questioned it; she just believed in it. This realization leads to her first controlled manifestation of her imagination.
Chapter 44 Summary
Redd realizes that Alyss survived the Continuum, and she uses her imagination to find Alyss in the Volcanic Plains with the other Alyssians. Jack tells Redd about the Looking Glass Maze and its significance to Alyss obtaining her full powers. Redd wants to obtain this power for herself and decides she will track Alyss’s location and, by extension, the location of the Looking Glass Maze.
Chapter 45 Summary
The Alyssians arrive at the Valley of Mushrooms, and Alyss goes to speak with the blue caterpillar. He tells her that the key to the Looking Glass Maze is in a puzzle shop in Wondertropolis and that Hatter will lead them to the one who knows how to find the shop. Alyss returns to her group and relays this information, and they set off for Wondertropolis.
Part 3, Chapters 38-45 Analysis
These chapters’ driving element is Alyss’s struggle with imagination, building off the previous chapters in which she struggled with identity. Now that Alyss has decided to step forward and undertake the Looking Glass Maze, she has accepted her role and her duty to defeat Redd; the next step is for her to attain the necessary powers, namely the imaginative abilities Alyss believed were lost to her.
Key to regaining these abilities is Alyss’s realization that manifestation requires self-belief: “To will something into being, the willing of it must be so deep down that no self-doubt is possible” (271). The moment Alyss accepts this is the moment that she can manifest her imagination. This is particularly relevant to Alyss’s character arc because, for Alyss, attaining this deep, unshakeable belief in herself is crucial to also resolving her identity crisis. Previously, in England, Alyss lost her identity once she stopped believing in herself and her Wonderland experiences; identity correlates with self-belief, which underlies manifestation. Alyss’s reclamation of her imaginative powers here foreshadows her imminent triumph over the battle with her identity.
In Chapter 44, Beddor employs irony to foreshadow the weaknesses in Redd’s character that will lead to her undoing. When Redd turns to In Queendom Speramus for information on the Looking Glass Maze, the book is useless because she earlier ordered all its contents to be replaced with her own writings. Instead, the book contains “her own words in Bibwit’s handwriting” (276). The irony is that Redd’s hunger for power—her re-authoring the book—now deprives her of that power, and the text’s helpful information is lost to her.
Redd’s perspective is also ironic; she assumes that she will be able to use Alyss to find the Looking Glass Maze and thus that Alyss will “become the agent of her own downfall” (278). However, as demonstrated with her egotistic vandalism of In Queendom Speramus, it is really Redd who is shooting herself in the foot. These ironies expose the fatal hubris of Redd’s character, who, unlike Alyss, really will be “the agent of her own downfall” (278).
