The Mad Gardener’s Song

-Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

(“The Mad Gardener’s Song” contains several disjointed stanzas which have a mad logic as a common factor. The first line of each stanza begins with “He thought he saw…” The third line is the same in each stanza: “He looked again, and found it was.” This revised vision leads the persona to a confusion in the last two lines of each stanza. However, the conclusion does not match the premise from which it is drawn.)

This is a story of a gardener who reflects upon how his family life became unsuccessful and ended with the breaking up with his wife.

The gardener’s wife was fat and querulous. She used to keep on making noise like a trumpeting elephant. One day she handed him a divorce letter. He became very sad.

His sister’s husband’s niece also lived in his house. She was fat and very lazy like a buffalo.

When he was reading a newspaper, Next Week, he found a notice in the middle page of it. He could not get anything written in it. It looked like a poisonous snake to him.

He saw a bank clerk who was a fat and filthy as a hippopotamus. He wanted to send him away as soon as possible.

He was ill and bed-ridden. So, he had to take medicine tablets. But he didn’t like them.

His things were broken and not taken care properly by his wife and other family members.

When he read the divorce letter again on the lamp light, he could avoid crying. He wept whole night.

He remembered his argument with his wife. He argued with her as fiercely and logically as he could as if he were a Pope. But all his argument was futile. Finally, he had to be hopeless.