Through The Looking-Glass, Influences? Pt. II

Alice meets these two characters along her path, and in such she remembers an old poem....

'Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
 
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'

After a bit more playful banter, things turn to the surreal (well, moreso anyway,) and the poem starts to come to life.

'Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say 'Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella and seized her by the wrist.

'Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.

'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little white thing.  'Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he was frightened:  'only an old rattle--quite old and broken.'

'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his hair.  'It's spoilt, of course!'  Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella.

Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, 'You needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'

'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever.  'It's new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice new RATTLE!' and his voice rose to a perfect scream.

All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it:  which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother.  But he couldn't quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the umbrella, with only his head out:  and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything else,' Alice thought.

'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.

'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella:  'only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.'

[section snipped for brevity]

'I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought Alice.

'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to his brother:  'but you can have the umbrella--it's quite as sharp. Only we must begin quick.  It's getting as dark as it can.'

'And darker,' said Tweedledee.

It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on.  'What a thick black cloud that is!' she said.  'And how fast it comes!  Why, I do believe it's got wings!'

'It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm:  and the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.

Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree.  'It can never get at me HERE,' she thought:  'it's far too large to squeeze itself in among the trees.  But I wish it wouldn't flap its wings so--it makes quite a hurricane in the wood-- here's somebody's shawl being blown away!'

Now, two things seem apparent here:

1) Alice recites the poem, and the actual events start to unfold.  Shades of Walt and the bears?  Reminiscent of Ben's "magic box?"  Desires and subconcious come to life?  Are the "Tweedles" really real (is any of it real?, which is an over-arching theme of the book) or did Alice "will" them into being as well?

and the big one I see:

2) Does anyone else see an obvious parallel to the crow and Cerberus/The Smoke Monster?  Being the one thing that both sides do not understand, and that scare both of them to death.  Even moreso, the way Alice eludes the crow, by ducking underneath a tree.  Several times now, we've seen Smokey evaded by folks ducking into the same small group of bamboo trees, where he couldn't reach....

OK, so what might happen in the finale?  Does Ol' Smokey finally come for more blood and frighten the two warring camps (the Others and the 815 survivors) into giving it up?

The more you read this story, by the way, the more you realize just how much of the LOST story has to have been influenced by the classics.  Either on purpose or just as an afterthought.  Whether its just the re-emergence of classical themes or elements such as this.

Furthermore, the shawl Alice reaches for belongs to the White Queen, and follows directly into the story we talked about in Pt. I.  At that point, "the crow" is forgotten, not to be spoken of again.