Jabberwocky: It's A Satire, Not An Antagonist!

I hate it when people try to adapt Lewis Carrol's masterpiece Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and keep crossing it over with his other masterpiece Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.  This often leads to some of the lamest, most overdone, phony-baloney plot-devices ever found in the history of satirical literature.  Such stupidities include, but are not limited to, making the Queen of Hearts a tyrant when she's merely grouchy, mixing her up with the Red Queen (who was of a much more amiable nature), making Alice come back when she's a young woman and finds that Wonderland is in grave danger, the list just keeps going. 
        Perhaps the worst plot device of them all is making the Jabberwock a threat/antagonist in the story.  The monster only appears in a nonsensical poem Alice reads and is only mentioned again when she talks to Humpty Dumpty about what words of the poem even mean.

Before I go any further on this, let's look at the poem itself for a moment.  

                                             'Twas brillig and the slithy toves

                                         Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

                                         All mimsy were the borogroves

                                         And the mome raths outgrabe.

                                             "Beware the Jabberwock my son,

                                         The jaws that bite; the claws that catch.

                                         Beware the Jubjub Bird, and shun

                                        The frumious Bandersnatch."

                                          He took his vorpal sword in hand:

                                          Long time the manxome foe he sought. 

                                          So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

                                          And stood a while in thought. 

                                          And as in uffish thought he stood,

                                         The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

                                         Came wiffling through the tulgy wood

                                         And burbled as it came. 

                                 

                                         One, two!  One, two! and through and through

                                         The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!  

                                         He left it dead and with its head,

                                         He went galumphing back.   

                                         "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

                                          Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

                                          Oh frabous day!  Caloo Callay!"

                                          He chortled in his joy.                                          

                                        
                                             'Twas brillig and the slithy toves

                                         Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

                                         All mimsy were the borogroves

                                         And the mome raths outgrabe.

This poem is a satire of the heroic epic.  It has the bold hero going and slaying the monster.  But the monster has a name that sounds more like a parrot squawk than anything else.  And the young man is little more than a teenager.  He also comes galumphing back instead of a heroic march.  And the monster is burbling rather than roaring.  That sounds more like a comic creature than a terrible one (although truth be told, it did scare me as a child).  I could go on about the meaning of the words in the poem, but that would take too long. 
So let's take a look at the titular creature next. 
     

Look at that thing!  Its neck could not possibly support its head at all.  And do you really think its claws could catch anything?  And its teeth look more like those of an herbivore.  That tail looks very weak as well; it's just dragging on the ground.  All in all the Jabberwock looks like a very disjointed and out-of-order creature that can't really survive.  

So why do people insist on making it a villain?  The so-called Jabberwock in the America Magee's Alice video game looks like rancor-dragon cyborg on steroids.  And the one in Tim Burton's latest badfic looks like the result of what happens when Smaug has a drunk night out with a pterosaur.  And both of them make it a threat.  THAT DID NOT HAPPEN IN THE BOOK!  Plus, it never even made an appearance outside of the poem.  
      Also, making it the chief henchbeast of the Queen of Hearts is one of the worst plot devices ever conceived.  It not only is a terrible cliche, but replaces the Beamish Boy with Alice, and thus takes away all the humor from the poem.  The two Alice novels are satirical novels that poke fun at the society of the day.  They are not dark fantasy epics.  

If there's any group that successfully pulled off making a good adaptaion of Lewis Carrol's work, it was the Muppets.  

This version does the story right, namely that it adapts the story without sacrificing any of the original satire, (or more precisely, the Muppets used their own version of satire, but it was satire nonetheless).  And as you can see, they kept the monster looking looking very much ridiculous.  

So take the hint, Tim Burton and company!  Lewis Carrol's works are meant to be hilarious and not fantasy epics.  Please be so kind as to note that the poem Jabberwocky happens to be a parody of such epics.  And with that in mind, LEAVE IT THE KRIFF ALONE!