Mock Turtle


The Mock Turtle is a fictional character devised by Lewis Carroll from his popular 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Its name is taken from a dish that was popular in the Victorian period, mock turtle soup.

''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''

Carroll enjoyed such puns on Victorian fashions and etiquette, and showed this frequently. The description and drawing by John Tenniel gives comedic value to the Mock Turtle, as he is clearly an assemblage of creatures, therefore not a real turtle as his name rightly suggests.
Alice encounters the Mock Turtle with the Gryphon. The Mock Turtle is a very melancholic character, because it is thought that he used to be a real turtle. He tells Alice his history of going to school in the sea, but cannot understand the school system that Alice describes to him—least of all the poetry she recites. Alice cannot understand it either. This is a pun on the two meanings of "school", referring in the turtle's usage to a school of fish or marine animals, and by Alice to an institute of learning. He says his teacher was an old Sea Turtle called Tortoise and when Alice asks him why he was called Tortoise if he was a Turtle the Mock Turtle answers, "We called him tortoise because he taught us!".

Origins

To say that the Mock Turtle's name is a pun on the name of the soup is incomplete. The Tenniel illustration of the Mock Turtle specifically depicts it as a collection of creatures that make up the ingredients of mock turtle soup; they are not random. The pun is not only of the name, but of the nature of the soup itself.
Traditionally, mock turtle soup takes the parts of a calf that were not frequently used and often discarded, including the head, hooves, and tail; and uses the non-muscular meat to imitate turtle meat. Tenniel's illustration shows the Mock Turtle with the body of a turtle, and the head, hooves, and tail of a calf. The complicated pun, then, is both word-play and picture-play.

Media incarnations