The Hunting of the Snark

***The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)*** is typically categorized as a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Written from 1874 to 1876, the poem borrows the setting, some creatures, and eight portmanteau words from Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" in his children's novel *Through the Looking-Glass* (1871).

Henry Holiday, the illustrator of the poem, thought of it as a "tragedy".

The plot follows a crew of ten trying to hunt the Snark, an animal which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. The only one of the crew to find the Snark quickly vanishes, leading the narrator to explain that it was a Boojum after all. The poem is dedicated to young Gertrude Chataway, whom Carroll met at the English seaside town Sandown in the Isle of Wight in 1875. Included with many copies of the first edition of the poem was Carroll's religious tract, *An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice"*.

*The Hunting of the Snark* was published by Macmillan in the United Kingdom in late March 1876, with illustrations by Henry Holiday. The first printing of *The Hunting of the Snark* consisted of 10,000 copies. There were two reprintings by the conclusion of the year; in total, the poem was reprinted 17 times between 1876 and 1908. Carroll often denied knowing the meaning behind the poem; however, in an 1896 reply to one letter, he agreed with one interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the search for happiness. Scholars have found various meanings in the poem, among them existential angst, an allegory for tuberculosis, and a mockery of the Tichborne case. *The Hunting of the Snark* has been alluded to in various works and has been adapted for musicals, opera, plays, and music.

## Plot

### Setting

*The Hunting of the Snark* shares its fictional setting with Lewis Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" published in his children's novel *Through the Looking-Glass* (1871). Eight nonsense words from "Jabberwocky" appear in *The Hunting of the Snark*: bandersnatch, beamish, frumious, galumphing, jubjub, mimsiest (which previously appeared as mimsy in "Jabberwocky"), outgrabe and uffish. In a letter to the mother of his young friend Gertrude Chataway, Carroll described the domain of the Snark as "an island frequented by the Jubjub and the Bandersnatch—no doubt the very island where the Jabberwock was slain."

### Characters

The crew consists of ten members, whose descriptions all begin with the letter B: a Bellman, the leader; a "Boots", who is the only member of the crew without an illustration; a maker of Bonnets and Hoods; a Barrister, who settles arguments among the crew; a Broker, who can appraise the goods of the crew; a Billiard-marker, who is greatly skilled; a Banker, who possesses all of the crew's money; a Butcher, who can only kill beavers; a Beaver, who makes lace and has saved the crew from disaster several times; and a Baker, who can only bake wedding cake, forgets his belongings and his name, but possesses courage.

### Summary

After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman's map of the Ocean—a blank sheet of paper—the hunting party arrive in a strange land, and the Bellman informs them of the five signs of a Snark: its "meagre and hollow, but crisp" taste; a habit of rising late and taking breakfast during five o'clock tea; "its slowness in taking a jest"; a "fondness for bathing-machined"; and its ambition. The Bellman warns them that some Snarks are highly dangerous Boojums, causing the Baker to faint. Once revived, the Baker recalls that his uncle warned him that if the Snark turns out to be a Boojum, the hunter will "softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again." The Baker confesses that the notion of this sudden vanishment brings him much distress.

With this in mind, they split up to hunt the Snark: "They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; / They pursued it with forks and hope; / They threatened its life with a railway-share; / They charmed it with smiles and soap." Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver, previously mutually wary, become fast friends, after the Butcher teaches it more in ten minutes than it could learn from books in seventy years. The Barrister, meanwhile, dreams of the court trial of a pig accused of deserting its sty, whom the Snark is defending. The Snark, however, finds the pig guilty and sentences it to transportation and a fine of forty pound. His dream concludes with the jailer informing the court that the pig has actually been dead for years, to the judge's disgust.

During the hunt, the Banker finds himself attacked by a bandersnatch, and loses his sanity after trying to bribe the creature. At the conclusion of the poem, the Baker calls out that he has found a snark, but when the others arrive, he has mysteriously disappeared, leading the narrator to explain: "For the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see."

## Development

Two explanations of which event in Carroll's life gave rise to *The Hunting of the Snark* have been offered. Biographer Morton N. Cohen connects the creation of *The Hunting of the Snark* with the illness of Carroll's cousin and godson, the twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wilcox. On 17 July 1874, Carroll travelled to Guildford, Surrey, to care for him for six weeks, while the young man struggled with tuberculosis. The next day, while taking a walk in the morning after only a few hours of sleep, Carroll thought of the poem's final line: "For the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see." Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller suggest that the event that inspired the poem was the sudden death of Carroll's beloved uncle, Robert Wilfred Skeffington Lutwidge, caused by a violent mentally-ill patient in 1873, during Lutwidge's time as an inspector of lunatic asylums. They support their analysis with parts of the poem, such as the Baker's uncle's advice to seek the Snark with thimbles, forks, and soap, which, according to Torrey and Miller, were all items the lunatic asylum inspectors checked during their visits.

To illustrate the poem Carroll chose Henry Holiday, whom he had met in 1869 or 1870. At the time Carroll approached him to ask if he could create three illustrations for the poem, Carroll had three 'fits', as he called the parts of his poem—fit can mean either canto or convulsion—completed: "The Landing", "The Hunting", and "The Vanishing". He intended to title it *The Boojum* and include it in his fantasy novel *Sylvie and Bruno*, which was unfinished at the time. However, in late October 1875, Carroll thought about having it published during Christmas; this proved impossible, as the wood engraving for the illustrations needed three months to be complete. By the time Holiday had completed the sketches and sent them to Carroll, Carroll had already created a new fit requiring an illustration. They worked this way until Holiday had created nine illustrations as well as the front cover and the back cover of the book. The completed poem comprised 141 stanzas of four lines each, with internal rhymes in the first and third lines of irregular stanzas appearing in the poem from the second fit onwards. Holiday and Carroll additionally had some disagreements on the artwork. Carroll initially objected to Holiday's personification of hope and care, but agreed to the change, when Holiday explained that he had only intended to add another layer of meaning to the word "with". However, Carroll refused his illustration of the Boojum, preferring that the creature go without a depiction, and made him change his initial portrayal of the Broker, as it could be perceived as anti-semitic.

There is no depiction of the Snark. However, based on a draft by Lewis Carroll, the Snark was allowed to show up in an illustration by Henry Holiday, where it appeared in a dream of the Barrister. As for the word "Snark", Carroll did not give it any meaning. The word "snarking" had been used in 1866 to describe a sound.

## First publishing

Upon the printing of the book on 29 March 1876, Carroll gave away eighty signed copies to his favourite young friends; in a typical fashion, he signed them with short poems, many of them acrostics of the child's name. He dedicated *The Hunting of the Snark* to Chataway, whom he had befriended in summer 1875 at the English seaside town Sandown on the Isle of Wight. He finished the dedication a month after befriending her, a double acrostic poem that not only spelled out her name, but contained a syllable of her name in the first line of each stanza. The stanza of his first draft concluded "*Rest on a friendly knee, the tale to ask / That he delights to tell.*" The poem was printed in *The Hunting of the Snark* with permission from Chataway's mother.

Included with many copies of the first edition of *The Hunting of the Snark* was Carroll's three-page, religious tract to his young readers, *An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice"*. Largely written on 5 February 1876, *An Easter Greeting* explores the concept of innocence and eternal life through biblical allusions and literary allusions to Romantic writers William Blake and William Wordsworth. Gardner suggests that Carroll included the tract as a way of balancing the dark tone of the poem. Scholar Selwyn Goodacre speculates that, as many copies of first-edition of the poem contain the tract, there is a possibility that all first editions originally had a copy of *An Easter Greeting*.

## Analysis

Various themes have been suggested by scholars. According to biographer Florence Becker Lennon, the poem's "motif of loss of name or identity" is typical of Carroll's work. Richard Kelly writes that the poem contains a "theme of annihilation." Furthermore, Edward Guiliano feels that the *Snark* is within the nonsense tradition of Thomas Hood and, especially, W. S. Gilbert, the librettist of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan team. According to him, a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert's Bab Ballads on *The Hunting of the Snark*, based on the fact that Carroll was well-acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age.

In response to various letters asking for the meaning of the poem, Carroll often replied that he did not know. However, in an 1896 reply to one letter, he agreed with one interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the search for happiness. Widely varying interpretations of *The Hunting of the Snark* have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis, a mockery of the Tichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others. According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his violation of the laws of nature by hoping to unravel its mysteries. Lennon sees *The Hunting of the Snark* as "a tragedy of frustration and bafflement," comparable to British actor Charlie Chaplin's early comedies. According to Kelly, *The Hunting of the Snark* is "Carroll's comic rendition of his fears of disorder and chaos, with the comedy serving as a psychological defense against the devastating idea of personal annihilation." Kelly writes that the Bellman's Rule of Three and starting each character's name with the letter B are "notable attempts to create a sense of order and meaning out of chaos." Martin Gardner sees the poem as dealing with existential angst, and states that the Baker may be Carroll's satire of himself, pointing to the fact that the Baker was named after a beloved uncle, as was Carroll, and that the two were around the same age at the time of the writing of the poem. Alternatively, Larry Shaw of the fan magazine *Inside and Science Fiction Advertiser* suggests that the Boots, being the Snark, actually murdered the Baker.

**Text:** *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* | *Through the Looking-Glass* | *The Nursery "Alice"* | ***The Hunting of the Snark***
**Retellings:** *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland retold in words of one syllable* (1905) | *Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland* (2010)
**Television:** *Fushigi no Kuni no Alice* | *Once Upon a Time in Wonderland*
**Literary adaptations:** *Alice in Murderland* | *Alice in the Country of Hearts* | *Miyuki-chan in Wonderland*