what does "fall through the looking glass" mean?

[catbert]

I know about Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, but what is a person trying to say when she states, "I feel like I've fallen through the looking glass"? That the situation she finds herself in is so surreal that she feels like she is in some sort of Twilight Zone?

 

[bhaisahab]

I know about Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, but what is a person trying to say when she states, "I feel like I've fallen through the looking glass"? That the situation she finds herself in is so surreal that she feels like she is in some sort of Twilight Zone?

Something like that, yes.

 

[Barb_D]

Interesting mixed metaphor, though - I fell through the looking glass and ended up in the Twilight Zone.

 

[catbert]

Interesting mixed metaphor, though - I fell through the looking glass and ended up in the Twilight Zone.

Well, that makes it easier for *me* to understand what she is saying, but I am not insisting on it. :-D

It's just that the context I heard it in (i.e., the situation this woman finds herself in) is very negative and scary, and that's not what I would normally associate Alice in Wonderland with.

 

[pandovic]

Well, that makes it easier for *me* to understand what she is saying, but I am not insisting on it. :-D

It's just that the context I heard it in (i.e., the situation this woman finds herself in) is very negative and scary, and that's not what I would normally associate Alice in Wonderland with.

It's a pretty scary world through the looking glass, where nothing is quite as it seems. Speaking of mixed metaphors, I think your author has confused things a bit. Alice falls down the rabbit hole in Alice In Wonderland but steps through the looking glass in the second book, so really it should be one or the other, but then not everyone's a pedant!