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Why the PG rating?
E3 Haroun Alice
by rmccally

In both Through the Looking Glass and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the reader is presented with landscapes divided in severe conflict. Haroun and the Sea of Stories features a land divided into two factions, the Chupwalas and the Guppees, who are on the verge of a terrible war when Haroun and Rashid arrive in their world. Through the Looking Glass features a world that hosts a living game of chess, which is a brutal game in which both sides aim to kill each others’ kings and annihilate each others’ armies in the process. However, despite these backdrops of certain violence, neither of these books includes any real violence. The war of Haroun and the Sea of Stories is brief, disorganized, and anti-climactic and the chess pieces in Through the Looking Glass get along quite well and never actually kill the king. Violence is excluded from both books for two different reasons: in Through the Looking Glass, it is excluded because either the readers or the characters are too aware that the plot has been pre-determined, making a massive conflict unnecessary and in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, violent conflict is left out in order to convey the message that communication and cooperation are vital aspects of life.
In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the great battle scene between the Chupwalas and the Guppees that has been built up to for the whole story consists of only a few sentences. The result is that the fierce Chupwalas, “after the shortest clash imaginable, simply threw down all their weapons and ran away” (Rushdie, 185). The reason given for this extremely anti-climactic battle scene is that the Chupwalas’ “vows of silence and their habits of secrecy had made them suspicious and distrustful of one another. They had no faith in their generals, either. The upshot was that the Chupwalas did not stand shoulder to shoulder, but betrayed one another, stabbed one another in the back, mutinied, hid deserted…” (185). Meanwhile, the Guppee library, because they had “talked everything through so fully, fought hard, remained united, supported each other when required to do so, and in general looked like a force with a common purpose” (184). Obviously, this battle scene could have been much more glorious and intense, however Rushdie instead used this important moment in the story to make a point: being united through friendship and communication is key to any kind of success. Therefore, the potential violence in this battle scene is sacrificed in order to convey this message.
Likewise, in Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself involved in a chess game in which all the pieces are alive. Creating a chess game with real characters is a frightening concept because the whole idea of the game is to kill each other, thus a lot of violence and many casualties would be expected. However, when Alice arrives in Looking Glass Land, the death and violence present in the concept of a chess game do not appear in the “war” between the chess characters. Even the final moves— which could be displayed as a dramatic end to a war— are hardly noticed. For example, when Alice arrives in her final square and becomes queen, she is met by the Red Queen who, by moving nearer to Alice, places the White King in check. However, as Gardner points out in his notes on page 250, no one seems to notice. The characters are not even aware of the significance of their moves: the white king is in danger of being killed and no one cares. And when Alice takes the Red Queen and checkmates the Red King to win the game, the move is described as a very playful, harmless thing. ‘“As for you,” she repeated, catching hold of the little creature [/Red Queen] in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, “I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!” (Carroll 266). This action describes the final moves of the chess game when Alice, as a white queen kills the Red Queen and puts the Red King in checkmate, which implies that he is doomed to die. Clearly, the traditional chess-oriented violence of these actions has been omitted. One of the reasons Carroll didn’t bother to make a violent, victorious end for the chess game is because he did not want to put too much emphasis on the outcome of the game. This is clear because, if Carroll had wanted us to be interested in the outcome of the game, he wouldn’t have pre-determined it in the preface—he would have had us wait in suspense to see what would happen. Rather, the focus of this book falls on how Alice interacts with the Looking Glass characters as she moves from square to square and what she learns from them. The fact that the reader is made aware of the pre-determination of the game in the preface makes the lack of violence and glory in the final stages of the battle understandable, as it would be boring and superfluous to the readers who already know what will happen.
Also in both books, non-violent and anti-climactic fights occur between individual characters. In Through the Looking Glass, Alice witnesses a fight between two Knights. The fight breaks out when the Red Knight tries to take her prisoner, but the White Knight arrives in the same square as the Red Knight to save her. Just by arriving in the same square, the White Knight has already defeated the Red Knight according to the rules of chess, and both the Knights play by the rules:
‘“You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?” the White Knight remarked, putting on his helmet too.
“I always do,” said the White Knight…” (Carroll 234).
It can be inferred that these “Rules of Battle” are actually the rules of chess because the White Knight later demonstrates an awareness of chess rules when he says he will take Alice the end of the woods but no further because “That’s the end of my move” (235). Despite the Knights’ understanding that there is no fight needed, they end up “fighting” anyway, and have a very goofy, slapstick struggle where they both keep falling off their horses and hurting themselves more than each other. The battle ends with “their both falling off in this way, side by side. When they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.” (236). Obviously, this fight was not seriously violent and the win wasn’t particularly victorious. The reason for the lack of violence is that this fight is simply a formality: it does not need to be violent because its purpose is not to inflict pain or actually kill anyone because the outcome of the fight is already determined by the rules of chess and both knights are aware of the rules.
Similarly, in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the Guppees come across a Shadow warrior, Mudra, who is fighting another pointless, non-violent fight with his own shadow. After the fight is finished, Mudra explains how Khattam-Shud “has had a very harmful affect on the friendships between Chupwalas and their shadows. Now many shadows are resentful of being joined to Chupwalas at the feet; and there are many quarrels” (Rushdie 133). The main reason this fight exists at all is to make a point about the dividedness of the Chupwala army, which is so divided that even the shadows and their owners can’t get along. Furthermore, the fact that Mudra, who was once at Khattam-Shud’s right side, deserted the army shows that this divisiveness leads to weakness. Thus, the only small-scale fight in this book does not need to include violence because its purpose is to reinforce a moral of the book— that communication and cooperation are fundamental— by showing the opposite of cohesion and explaining how that leads to problems.
Finally, the animosity that characteristically exists between the citizens of two warring factions is largely absent from both of these books. In Through the Looking Glass, the opposing Queens get along very well. The Red Queen even looks after the White Queen when she’s tired: ‘“She’s tired, poor thing!” said the Red Queen. “Smooth her hair— lend her your nightcap— and sing her a soothing lullaby” (Carroll 257). These characters are able to get along because Carroll did not give them enough freedom to make their own decisions, which would have constrained him to give them war-oriented motives for their moves. Instead, Carroll chose to keep them on the level of chess pieces being moved by another force. The pieces are not taking charge of their fates and actively causing things to happen, thus they need not personify the aggressiveness and rivalry that would characterize chess pieces if they were actually at war with each other and making decisions for themselves. Carroll’s chess characters just drift through the game together doing what another force— the Red King’s dream, Lewis Carroll’s pen— tells them to do. The pre-determination of the game allows the characters to get along because they are being moved around by another force and are not motivated by war.
This is less true of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, because there are evil shadow warriors that Haroun and his friends have to fight on the ship, however the majority of the Chupwalas do not hate the Guppees. This is evident when, the second he Chupwalas are freed, the “Chupwala maidens rushed black-nosed into the icy streets and garlanded the red-nosed and halo-headed guppies with black snowdrops; and kissed them” (Rushdie, 185). The fact that the Chupwalas immediately embrace the Guppees shows a general lack of animosity. Furthermore, right after the war ends, the new government of the land of Chup announces its “desire for a long and lasting peach with Gup, a peace in which Night and Day, Speech and Silence, would no longer be separated into Zones by Twilight Strips and Walls of Force” (191). This desire, which is expressed by the government and shared by the liberated Chupwalas, is what prevents there from being animosity between sides, because the majority of the people only want unity. This situation, where what had appeared to be animosity was actually a longing for unity, is used to, once again, reinforce the importance of communication and cohesion.
Thus, both Through the Looking Glass and Haroun and the Sea of Stories go through the whole course of their story avoiding the expected violence of their subject matter. The fact that both authors decided to totally ignore a point of the story that, for many authors, would be an opportunity to create fantastic drama and glory and gore is interesting. These parallel decisions hit on a deeper similarity between the authors: both of these books were written for specific children that the authors knew— Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking Glass for his friend Alice Liddell and Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his son, Zafar Rushdie. Thus, perhaps the avoidance of violence goes a little deeper than just needlessness: for both authors, the choice was made on a personal level as well to keep their stories pleasant enough to be appropriate gifts for their chosen children.

May 12, 2005, 03:54 PM

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