The Hunting of the Snark: Encyclopedia II - The Hunting of the Snark - Interpretations

The Hunting of the Snark - Interpretations

Various theories have tried to elucidate the text or parts thereof.

The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll is the Baker

This is by far the most serious of them all. The text has a number of hints at this fact. The fact that his name is unknown to the other crew members (he forgets it) attests that some riddle is involved. The baker's character as described in Fit the First matches other descriptions of Carroll of himself (e.g. the White Knight in Through the Looking-Glass). Lewis Carrol was 42 when he wrote the poem. The Baker is around the same age, as the phrase "I skip forty years" in Fit the Third: The Baker's Tale discloses. And finally, the Baker had "forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, With his name painted clearly on each" (Fit the First), which he left on the beach, presumably his previous life.

As already stated, the hunting of the Snark is unique among Lewis Carroll's work in its length and its dark nature. This also fits with an attempt to find a hidden personal message within its pages. Many believe that this hidden message should be in the repeating stanza

But no convincing theory yet explains it. Lewis Carroll once wrote: "Periodically I have received courteous letters from strangers begging to know whether The Hunting of the Snark is an allegory, or contains some hidden moral, or is a political satire: and for all such questions I have but one answer, I don't know!"

The Hunting of the Snark - The murderer was Boots

Apparently, as the poem states, the snark was a boojum. However, the following describes the Baker's last words, when the others see him leaping and cheering on a nearby hilltop:

The others disagree whether they heard the syllable "-jum" after this. Thus, a rival school of interpretation of the poem suggests that in fact there was no Boojum, but that the Boots betrayed them all and murdered the Baker, and that this was what the latter was trying to say when he died. It is worth mentioning that the Boots is the most mysterious of the crew members. He is alluded to very shortly in Fit the First and Fit the Fourth and nowhere else, and is the only one of the crew members which does not appear in any of the original illustrations. It is also reasonable to assume the Boots (shoeshine in contemporary English) would have a particular grudge against the Baker, as he was wearing 3 pairs of boots one over the other (Fit the first, and this also appears clearly in the illustrations).

The Hunting of the Snark - The Boojum was only dangerous to the Baker

There are a number of clues for this theory throughout the text. It is never stated explicitly that a Boojum might be dangerous to other crew members. When the Baker's uncle warns him about Boojums he says

Hinting that the Baker might be vulnerable to Boojums since he is "beamish", an uncommon word which also appears in "Jabberwocky". On hearing this the Bellman is surprised and complains that the Baker should have mentioned this fact before. One would hardly suppose that the Bellman was unaware about an inherent danger in Snarks, or that he expected his crew members to enlighten him on such issues. Thus one must conclude that the Bellman did not know a fact specific to the Baker. Finally, and most revealingly, the Bellman's reply is

Which clearly implies that the danger to the Baker is greater than to other crew members.

Contrariwise, the Bellman's speech ends with

So the Bellman was definitely aware that Boojums pose some danger — perhaps the danger to beamish people is simply larger than to others.

A frequent criticism of this theory is that it may not cohere with several other facts implied by this poem and "Jabberwocky". As Lewis Carroll implied (see above), the domain of the Snark might well have been the same place where the Jabberwock met with his end. Yet it is well known that the heroic nephew in "Jabberwocky", who felled the manxome beast, was himself beamish ("Come to my arms, my beamish boy"), and so ventured into the domain of the Snark to hunt the Jabberwock, on the advice of an uncle knowledgeable about that locale and about beamishness. Yet for his uncle to advise him to do so would be wildly inconsistent with the protectiveness evinced by typical uncles toward their beamish nephews in Carroll's poems; knowing this, Carroll would have realized the Jabberwock story could not have taken place on an island known to be populated with Snarks.

Two well-known replies suggest the following: (1) Perhaps the nephew in "Jabberwocky" was not beamish until after vanquishing the Jabberwock. Indeed, perhaps "beamish" means "Jabberwock-slaying". Then the nephew was in no danger until he was ready to leave the island: an acceptable risk. (Note that this interpretation allows the nephew to be the Baker himself.) (2) The Snark did not move in until the Jabberwock was killed. (Perhaps Jabberwocks and Snarks are natural enemies.)

It is also worth noting that these are only theories, and nothing in the poem specifically states that the Baker is in danger because he is beamish. There may be some other reason why he is vulnerable. This theory allows for the possibility that Boojums are especially dangerous for more mundane reasons (perhaps they are more fierce than other Snarks), so that the Bellman could have been aware of the danger that Boojums pose without specifically referring to the Baker.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Interpretations", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki