The Hunting of the Snark
Encyclopedia
The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits) is usually thought of as a nonsense poem
written by Lewis Carroll
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1874, when he was 42 years old. It describes "with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature".
The poem borrows occasionally from Carroll's short poem "Jabberwocky
" in Through the Looking-Glass
(especially the poem's creatures and portmanteau word
s), but it is a stand-alone work, first published in 1876
by Macmillan
. The illustrations were by Henry Holiday
.
In common with other Carroll works, the meaning of his poems has been queried and analysed in depth. One of the most comprehensive gatherings of information about the poem and its meaning is The Annotated Snark by Martin Gardner
.
(the leader), a Boots
, a Bonnet
-maker, a Barrister
, a Broker
, a Billiard
-marker, a Banker, a Butcher
, a Baker
, and a Beaver
. The Boots is the only character who is not shown in any illustration in the original, a fact that has led to much speculation (see below).
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. The Baker recalls that his uncle once warned him that, though catching Snarks is all well and good, you must be careful; for, if your Snark
is a Boojum, then you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again. With this in mind, they split up to hunt. Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver -previously mutually wary for the Butcher's specialty in preparing beavers- become fast friends, the Barrister falls asleep and dreams of a court trial defended by the Snark, and the Banker loses his sanity after being attacked by a frumious Bandersnatch
. At the end, the Baker calls out that he has found a Snark; but when the others arrive he has mysteriously disappeared, 'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'.
.
: it utilizes technically adept meter and rhyme, grammatically correct phrasing, logical chains of events—and largely nonsensical content, frequently employing made-up words such as "Snark". It is by far his longest poem; unlike Alice
, which is prose with occasional poems within the text, the Snark rhymes from start to end. The poem is divided into eight sections or "fits" (a pun on fit
, meaning a part of a song, and fit, meaning a seizure
or convulsion
—hence, "An Agony in 8 Fits"):
's illustrations for the original edition are caricatures with disproportionate heads and unpleasant features, very different from Tenniel
's illustrations of Alice.
However, Carroll may have thought the book was suitable for some children. Gertrude Chataway
(1866–1951) was the most important child friend in the life of the author, after Alice Liddell
. It was Gertrude who inspired The Hunting of the Snark, and the book is dedicated to her. Carroll first became friends with Gertrude in 1875, when she was aged nine, while on holiday at the English seaside. The Snark was published a year later. Upon the printing of the book, Carroll sent eighty signed copies to his favorite child friends. In a typical fashion, he signed them with short poems, many of them acrostic
s of the child's name. Additionally, Carroll inserted on his own expense an "Easter Greeting" into the first edition of his poem after it already was printed: "... And if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows. ..."
The relevance of what reviewers take to be Carroll's intentions in this matter has always been questioned. G. K. Chesterton
had this to say about it: It is not children who ought to read the words of Lewis Carroll, they are far better employed making mud-pies.
Morton Cohen, in his biography of Charles Dodgson (Carroll), connects the poem to the illness of Carroll's godson Charlie Wilcost. The 22 year old came down with tuberculosis, and Carroll nursed him through the long nights. It was a sorrowful task, seeing the young man consumed by fever and pain weighed heavily on him. The next morning, after 3 hours' sleep, he left the sickroom to walk on the Surrey Downs; he needed to get away, breath fresh air. This was the bright summer day when the solitary Boojum line came into his mind. The sudden disappearance of the Baker is not unlike the sudden death that overcame the young man.
",
remarks that "this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock", and goes on to explain how to pronounce borogoves and slithy toves (words which do not appear in the text of the Snark). Eight nonsense words from the "Jabberwocky" that do appear are bandersnatch
, beamish, frumious, galumphing, jubjub
, mimsiest (which appeared as mimsy in "Jabberwocky"), outgrabe and uffish. In a letter to a friend, 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".
The Boojum, as Gardner notes, will pop up some twenty years later (1893) in a surprising passage of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded that sharply contradicts all the previous evasions and outright denials in Carroll's letters:
While it is hardly surprising that a writer reuses some of his own inventions now and then, it is noteworthy that the themes of Carroll's poems ("Jabberwocky
", "The Mouse's Tale
", "The Pig-Tale", "The Mad Gardener's Song") run through all of his major works like, to borrow Gardner's expression, "demented fugues". In the Barrister's dream (Fit 6), for example, the Snark not only serves as jury (like Fury in regard to the Mouse in Alice) but acts as the counsel for the defense as well, besides finding the verdict and passing the sentence.
and, especially, W.S. Gilbert, the librettist of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan
team. Edward Guiliano even believes that a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert's Bab Ballads
on the Snark, based on the fact that Carroll was well acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age.
Gardner mentions, among other examples of conjecture, Chaos, Co-ordinated, a science fiction story by John MacDougal, and cites Norbert Wiener
as saying in his book Cybernetics that the human brain, just like a computing machine, probably works on a variant of the famous principle expounded by Lewis Carroll. Gardner also notes another example of the Bellman's rule: Carroll's constantly reiterated reply "I don't know", when asked to explain what he had in mind with the Snark.
As a Pre-Raphaelite
illustrator, Holiday took reference to earlier artists and earlier styles, where allegorical figures (often women) depicted abstract concepts like care, hope, religion, liberty etc.
It has been suggested that the character identified as "Care" below is really the ship's figurehead (as shown in the first illustration), and that "Hope" is actually the Boots. Andrew Lang
, who reviewed the book in 1876, suggested that "Hope" might be the Bonnet-maker. However, a shadowy figure making bonnets can be seen on the ship in the second illustration.
A 1941 edition was illustrated by Mervyn Peake
. Another was illustrated in 1975 by Ralph Steadman
.
translated the poem into German
, and wrote the opera based on it. The opera was first performed in the Prinzregenten theater in Munich
on January 16, 1988. In the mid-1980s, Mike Batt
produced a concept album and later a stage show based on the poem. A 1986 musical entitled Boojum! is loosely based on the poem. The musical was written by Martin Wesley-Smith
and Peter Wesley-Smith. It also includes a pseudo-biography of Lewis Carroll and elements from the Alice series.
A number of books make references to the poem. Inspired by Carroll's poem,
Jack London
named his Yacht the Snark, and he described his voyage across the Pacific Ocean
in the book titled The Cruise of the Snark
(1911). In Gregory Benford
's In the Ocean of Night
, the protagonist discovers an alien ship visiting the solar system and calls it "Snark" as he tries to track its movements. In Vonda McIntyre
's novelization of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
, she reveals that the use of protomatter in the Genesis Device
was made possible due to the discovery of sub-elementary particles, which were named by whimsical scientists as "snarks" and "boojums". In the "Uplift
" series of books by David Brin
, the human and dolphin
heroes are travelling aboard the Streaker
, a Snarkhunter class exploration ship. When Gillian Baskin, the captain pro tem of the Streaker, orders a counterattack against her pursuers, her officers protest that their ship is "only a snark." Gillian Baskin retorts, "This snark has grown into a boojum!" Other references to The Hunting of the Snark may be found elsewhere in these books. Characters in The Lyre of Orpheus
, by Robertson Davies
, often refer to the poem, and wonder whether the end of their quest to put on an opera will reveal a Snark or a Boojum. The Bellman and The Hunting of the Snark are referenced in Jasper Fforde
's The Well of Lost Plots
, his third Thursday Next
book. In this novel the Term boojum refers to the annihilation of a character from the Book World. China Miéville
's The Scar
features a ship called the Castor (Latin for beaver), crewed by characters whose names reference the characters of Snark: for example Tinntinnabulum, meaning a tinkling of bells, as in the Bellman). There are numerous references to The Hunting of the Snark in the works of Robert Heinlein, particularly in The Number of the Beast
. Stefano Benni
, an Italian satirical
writer
and journalist
, has a character named boojum and a map of the Boojum brothers in his book Terra! (1983), translated into around seven foreign languages.
Gerald Durrell
used quotes from the poem as epigraphs to the chapters of his book "Two in the bush".
"Snarks" is the popular nickname for the alien Zn'rx
, introduced in the pages the of the Marvel Comics
title Power Pack
, wherein the nickname replaced the unpronounceable proper name. It was introduced to the human children characters by an alien of yet another race, who was a fan of Earthly literature.
Douglas Adams
divided the radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
into "fits", after a suggestion by Geoffrey Perkins
, inspired by the Hunting of the Snark. Additionally, in the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is stated that the answer to the "ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" is simply "42", the number which, as stated below, holds some unknown significance to Carroll.
In Larry Niven
's known space
universe, there is an alien species called Bandersnatchi
.
In John Brunner
's SF novel Stand on Zanzibar
the phrase "I tell you three times" is used to force the semi-sentient computer Shalmaneser to accept information it claims is inconsistent with the real world. The character using it remarks "Someone around here must have had a sense of humor".
Episode 13 of the Japanese anime series Ghost Hound
is titled "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see." In this episode the main character, Tarō, meets a strange creature while searching for his sister's ghost in the "Unseen World". He asks the creature its name, to which it replies, "I am Snark".
In the fantasy
series A Song of Ice and Fire
by George R.R. Martin, a character named Tyrion Lannister jokes about being afraid of Snarks, referring to them as imaginary monsters of childhood. The first instance occurs in the first book of the series, A Game of Thrones
, and other instances occur throughout the series.
Alan Moore
and Kevin O'Neill
's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
proposed an explanation in a text supplement in its second volume; in their version of events, the portal into which Alice Liddell
first falls is the subject of an expedition carried out by the crew members in company of a lacemaker named "Miss Beever" and led by "The Reverend Dr. Eric Bellman". After disappearing into the hole, like Liddell they are found near a river bank months later, naked and suffering from exposure; unlike Liddell they are all hopelessly insane, and the Banker has become a photographic negative. When visited by Wilhemina Murray years later, in an asylum, Bellman refuses to explain the fate of the missing Baker other than mentioning that "... the last word he said was 'Boo'".
Roger Langridge
's comic book Snarked refers to the poem, even including it with its illustrations in issue #0.
In The Consuming Fire, the second book in the Hunter Brown
series by Christopher and Allan Miller, there is a small, furry creature named Boojum who later turns out to be a Snark.
referred to the Bellman's Rule in his ruling in Parhat v. Gates
, saying, "The government suggests that several of the assertions in the intelligence documents are reliable because they are made in at least three different documents ... We are not persuaded. Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true. In fact we have no basis for concluding that there are independent sources for the documents' thrice-made assertions".
Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States, in Medellin v. Texas, 128 S. Ct. 1346, 1381–82 wrote in dissent: "[I]t would be unrealistic to expect state parties to multilateral instruments like the VCCR to agree on explicit language specifying a treaty's domestic effect ... the absence or presence of language in a treaty about a provision's self-execution proves nothing at all. At best the Court is hunting the snark. At worst ..."
N. David Mermin
named a phenomenon in superfluidity
after the Boojum.
The game Half-Life features a small, insect-like alien called the Snark as a weapon.
The Boojum tree
, a bizarre kind of tree native to Baja California, was named after the Boojum in the poem.
There is a Snark as well as a JubJub Island and a Boojum Rock in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.
In 1975 Arne Nordheim
, a composer from Norway, composed The Hunting of The Snark for trombone. The Return of The Snark for trombone and tape recorder was composed in 1987. In 2009, the jazz collective NYNDK produced The Hunting of the Snark which includes a variation on Nordheim's composition. And in 2010, Bajka's
In Wonderland was produced with eleven songs, among them one song for every "Fit" in Carroll's poem.
The British prog-rock band Henry Cow
's Tim Hodgkinson
wrote a song "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", featured on their first album, Legend. This song is the only cut on the album with discernible lyrics, and contains the line "That the Snark was a Boojum all can tell". Within the context of the whole lyric, and given the band's confrontational Marxist leanings at the time, this line would appear to be using the Snark/Boojum bait-and-switch as a metaphor for capitalism's failure; promising the fulfillment of human potential, but producing annihilation.
The Northrop SM-62 Snark
was a United States cruise missile named after the Snark.
In the mathematical field of graph theory
, a snark
is a connected
, bridgeless
cubic graph
with chromatic index equal to 4. There are various theorems and conjectures about this type of object.
Richard Kelly theorizes that The Hunting of the Snark was "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".
). However, there is no evidence to suggest Dodgson ever intended The White Knight to represent himself; it is simply an assumption that has been made often enough to gain acceptance as a fact. Lewis Carroll 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. Martin Gardner
also suggests taking note of Rule 42 of the Code in the preface (No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm), Rule 42 in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(All persons more than a mile high to leave the court), and the fact that Carroll referred to his age as 42 when he was still in his thirties. So while the evidence does not allow saying anything about the identity of the Baker, the conclusion is safe that the number 42
seems to have had some sort of special significance for Carroll.
No convincing theory yet explains it. (It is an allegory for civilizing both a person as well as a country - thimbles represent proper or taylored clothing; care, hope, & charm represents the introduction and teaching of proper manners; and railway-share & soap represents the taming of wilderness and wild person) In Holiday's illustrations, 'Hope' and 'Care' were depicted as beautiful feminine personifications, the former holding a large gardening-fork. In correspondence with Carroll, Holiday said that he had intended to add a third meaning to the double-meaning of 'with' in the second line of the stanza – as an action (with forks), as an emotion (with a feeling of hope) and as a description (in company with the personification of hope). Carroll later suggested that Holiday design, for a new edition of the book, a front cover depicting Hope, surrounded by "a border of interlaced forks", and a back cover depicting Care surrounded by "a shower of thimbles". This idea was not carried out, as the book was not re-issued. Notably, the implication of this image would add a moral message to the story; though it starts with Fork and Hope, symbolising a courageous forward movement in the explorers, it would end with Thimbles and Care, implying that, having learned from the tragedies suffered in the poem, the explorers would become more careful in their ordinary lives.
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!" According to Gardner, there are more than three such denials on record. By the Bellman's rule-of-three, it follows that if the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson said he did not know what the unimaginable something is, then he really did not know.
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 three pairs of boots one over the other (Fit the First, and this also appears clearly in the illustrations). However, at the end of the poem Lewis Carroll- the impartial narrator- writes "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see".
Nonsense verse
Nonsense verse is a form of light, often rhythmical verse, usually for children, depicting peculiar characters in amusing and fantastical situations. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and tends to employ fanciful phrases and meaningless made-up words. Nonsense verse is closely related to...
written by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1874, when he was 42 years old. It describes "with infinite humour the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature".
The poem borrows occasionally from Carroll's short poem "Jabberwocky
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
" in Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
(especially the poem's creatures and portmanteau word
Portmanteau word
A portmanteau or portmanteau word is a blend of two words or morphemes into one new word. A portmanteau word typically combines both sounds and meanings, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog. More generally, it may refer to any term or phrase that combines two or more meanings...
s), but it is a stand-alone work, first published in 1876
1876 in literature
The year 1876 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*William Harrison Ainsworth**Chetwynd Calverley**The Leaguer of Lathom*Louisa May Alcott - Rose in Bloom*Machado de Assis - Helena*Rhoda Broughton - Joan...
by Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
. The illustrations were by Henry Holiday
Henry Holiday
Henry Holiday was an English historical genre and landscape painter, stained glass designer, illustrator and sculptor. He is considered to be a member of the Pre-Raphaelite school of art.-Early years and training:...
.
In common with other Carroll works, the meaning of his poems has been queried and analysed in depth. One of the most comprehensive gatherings of information about the poem and its meaning is The Annotated Snark by Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
.
The crew
The crew consists of ten members, whose descriptions all begin with the letter B: a BellmanBellman
Bellman is an alternative term for a bellhop. It may also refer to:People named Bellman* Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet and composer* Eric Bellman, psychotherapist* Gina Bellman, New Zealand/English actress...
(the leader), a Boots
Shoeshiner
Shoeshiner or boot polisher is a profession in which a person polishes shoes with shoe polish. They are often known as shoeshine boys because the job is traditionally that of a male child. In the leather fetish communities, they are often called bootblacks...
, a Bonnet
Bonnet (headgear)
Bonnets are a variety of headgear for both sexes, which have in common only the absence of a brim. Bonnet derives from the same word in French, where it originally indicated a type of material...
-maker, a Barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
, a Broker
Stock broker
A stock broker or stockbroker is a regulated professional broker who buys and sells shares and other securities through market makers or Agency Only Firms on behalf of investors...
, a Billiard
Billiards
Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
-marker, a Banker, a Butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...
, a Baker
Baker
A baker is someone who bakes and sells bread, Cakes and similar foods may also be produced, as the traditional boundaries between what is produced by a baker as opposed to a pastry chef have blurred in recent decades...
, and a Beaver
Beaver
The beaver is a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, North American Beaver and Eurasian Beaver . Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges . They are the second-largest rodent in the world...
. The Boots is the only character who is not shown in any illustration in the original, a fact that has led to much speculation (see below).
Plot summary
Ocean
An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...
—a blank sheet of paper—the hunting party arrive in a strange land. The Baker recalls that his uncle once warned him that, though catching Snarks is all well and good, you must be careful; for, if your Snark
Snark (Lewis Carroll)
The Snark is a fictional animal species created by Lewis Carroll in his nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark. His descriptions of the creature were, in his own words, unimaginable, and he wanted that to remain so.-The origin of the poem:...
is a Boojum, then you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again. With this in mind, they split up to hunt. Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver -previously mutually wary for the Butcher's specialty in preparing beavers- become fast friends, the Barrister falls asleep and dreams of a court trial defended by the Snark, and the Banker loses his sanity after being attacked by a frumious Bandersnatch
Bandersnatch
A Bandersnatch is a fictional creature from Lewis Carroll's 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass and 1874 poem "The Hunting of the Snark". Although neither poem describes the appearance of a Bandersnatch in great detail, in "The Hunting of the Snark" it has a long neck and snapping jaws, and both...
. At the end, the Baker calls out that he has found a Snark; but when the others arrive he has mysteriously disappeared, 'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'.
Recurring theme
Even more than in most nonsense poetry, inadequacy of language, meaning, and symbol is a recurring theme in Snark. Examples include the blank map, the Bellman's contradictory navigational orders, the Baker's name-loss and failure to settle on one replacement-name, his failing to mention his luggage, his attempt to communicate in the wrong languages, the Banker's absurd offer to protect the Beaver from being butchered by insuring it against fire and hail, the Butcher's self-nullifying arithmetical manipulations, the Court officers' unwillingness to fulfil their lawful obligations, the Banker's ridiculous attempt to bribe a predatory beast with money, and his subsequent aphasiaAphasia
Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....
.
Structure
The poem has some aspects characteristic of much of Carroll's poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
: it utilizes technically adept meter and rhyme, grammatically correct phrasing, logical chains of events—and largely nonsensical content, frequently employing made-up words such as "Snark". It is by far his longest poem; unlike Alice
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
, which is prose with occasional poems within the text, the Snark rhymes from start to end. The poem is divided into eight sections or "fits" (a pun on fit
Canto
The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...
, meaning a part of a song, and fit, meaning a seizure
Seizure
An epileptic seizure, occasionally referred to as a fit, is defined as a transient symptom of "abnormal excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain". The outward effect can be as dramatic as a wild thrashing movement or as mild as a brief loss of awareness...
or convulsion
Convulsion
A convulsion is a medical condition where body muscles contract and relax rapidly and repeatedly, resulting in an uncontrolled shaking of the body. Because a convulsion is often a symptom of an epileptic seizure, the term convulsion is sometimes used as a synonym for seizure...
—hence, "An Agony in 8 Fits"):
- The Landing
- The Bellman's Speech
- The Baker's Tale
- The Hunting
- The Beaver's Lesson
- The Barrister's Dream
- The Banker's Fate
- The Vanishing
Intended audience
It is disputed whether Carroll had a young audience in mind when he wrote the Snark. The ballad, like almost all of the poems in the Alice books, has no young protagonists, is rather dark, and does not end happily. In addition to the disappearance of the Baker, the Banker's loss of sanity is described in detail. Similarly, Henry HolidayHenry Holiday
Henry Holiday was an English historical genre and landscape painter, stained glass designer, illustrator and sculptor. He is considered to be a member of the Pre-Raphaelite school of art.-Early years and training:...
's illustrations for the original edition are caricatures with disproportionate heads and unpleasant features, very different from Tenniel
John Tenniel
Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of England’s 19th century. Tenniel is considered important to the study of that period’s social, literary, and art histories...
's illustrations of Alice.
However, Carroll may have thought the book was suitable for some children. Gertrude Chataway
Gertrude Chataway
Gertrude Chataway was the most important child-friend in the life of the author Lewis Carroll, after Alice Liddell. It was Gertrude who inspired his great nonsense mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark , and the book is dedicated to her, and opens with a poem that uses her name as a double...
(1866–1951) was the most important child friend in the life of the author, after Alice Liddell
Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Liddell , known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice is said to be named after her.-Biography:...
. It was Gertrude who inspired The Hunting of the Snark, and the book is dedicated to her. Carroll first became friends with Gertrude in 1875, when she was aged nine, while on holiday at the English seaside. The Snark was published a year later. Upon the printing of the book, Carroll sent eighty signed copies to his favorite child friends. In a typical fashion, he signed them with short poems, many of them acrostic
Acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
s of the child's name. Additionally, Carroll inserted on his own expense an "Easter Greeting" into the first edition of his poem after it already was printed: "... And if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows. ..."
The relevance of what reviewers take to be Carroll's intentions in this matter has always been questioned. G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
had this to say about it: It is not children who ought to read the words of Lewis Carroll, they are far better employed making mud-pies.
Origins
In the course of his career, Lewis Carroll developed an elegant and morally impeccable technique to fend off demands asking him to explain his work. However it is phrased, his answer is always the same: I don't know. This was the truth, although not in the sense that children and reviewers understood it: Carroll would not explain the meaning of his books because "a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant". Gardner gives half a dozen examples. Here is how Carroll "explained" the Snark in 1887: I was walking on a hillside, alone, one bright summer day, when suddenly there came into my head one line of verse – one solitary line – For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. I knew not what it meant, then: I know not what it means, now; but I wrote it down: and, sometime afterwards, the rest of the stanza occurred to me, that being its last line: and so by degrees, at odd moments during the next year or two, the rest of the poem pieced itself together, that being its last stanza.- In the midst of the word he was trying to say
- In the midst of his laughter and glee
- He had softly and suddenly vanished away
- For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
Morton Cohen, in his biography of Charles Dodgson (Carroll), connects the poem to the illness of Carroll's godson Charlie Wilcost. The 22 year old came down with tuberculosis, and Carroll nursed him through the long nights. It was a sorrowful task, seeing the young man consumed by fever and pain weighed heavily on him. The next morning, after 3 hours' sleep, he left the sickroom to walk on the Surrey Downs; he needed to get away, breath fresh air. This was the bright summer day when the solitary Boojum line came into his mind. The sudden disappearance of the Baker is not unlike the sudden death that overcame the young man.
Connections
In the preface to the Snark, Carroll, making fun of his recycling for the third time the first stanza of "JabberwockyJabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
",
remarks that "this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock", and goes on to explain how to pronounce borogoves and slithy toves (words which do not appear in the text of the Snark). Eight nonsense words from the "Jabberwocky" that do appear are bandersnatch
Bandersnatch
A Bandersnatch is a fictional creature from Lewis Carroll's 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass and 1874 poem "The Hunting of the Snark". Although neither poem describes the appearance of a Bandersnatch in great detail, in "The Hunting of the Snark" it has a long neck and snapping jaws, and both...
, beamish, frumious, galumphing, jubjub
Jubjub bird
The Jubjub bird is a dangerous creature mentioned in Lewis Carroll's nonsense poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark.In Jabberwocky the only detail given about the bird is that the protagonist should "beware" it. In The Hunting of the Snark however the creature is described in much greater...
, mimsiest (which appeared as mimsy in "Jabberwocky"), outgrabe and uffish. In a letter to a friend, 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".
The Boojum, as Gardner notes, will pop up some twenty years later (1893) in a surprising passage of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded that sharply contradicts all the previous evasions and outright denials in Carroll's letters:
- "Once upon a time there was a Boojum -" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too".
While it is hardly surprising that a writer reuses some of his own inventions now and then, it is noteworthy that the themes of Carroll's poems ("Jabberwocky
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
", "The Mouse's Tale
The Mouse's Tale
"The Mouse's Tale" is a concrete poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the novel, the chapter title refers to "A Long Tale" and the Mouse introduces it by saying, "Mine is a long and sad tale!"-Concrete...
", "The Pig-Tale", "The Mad Gardener's Song") run through all of his major works like, to borrow Gardner's expression, "demented fugues". In the Barrister's dream (Fit 6), for example, the Snark not only serves as jury (like Fury in regard to the Mouse in Alice) but acts as the counsel for the defense as well, besides finding the verdict and passing the sentence.
Influences
Some literary critics feel that the Snark is within the nonsense tradition of Thomas HoodThomas Hood
Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
and, especially, W.S. Gilbert, the librettist of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
team. Edward Guiliano even believes that a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert's Bab Ballads
Bab Ballads
The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan...
on the Snark, based on the fact that Carroll was well acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age.
The Bellman's rule-of-three
Another rule that has given rise to widespread speculation is the Bellman's rule-of-three: What I tell you three times is true. It runs as an underground current through the whole poem, breaking the surface only sporadically, as in Fit 1, Stanza 2, or Fit 5, Stanza 9.Gardner mentions, among other examples of conjecture, Chaos, Co-ordinated, a science fiction story by John MacDougal, and cites Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
as saying in his book Cybernetics that the human brain, just like a computing machine, probably works on a variant of the famous principle expounded by Lewis Carroll. Gardner also notes another example of the Bellman's rule: Carroll's constantly reiterated reply "I don't know", when asked to explain what he had in mind with the Snark.
Misinterpretations
A mistake in some electronic versions of the text on the internet is the substitution, or mirroring, of the second letter b in the word bribe, turning it into bride in fit 5, stanza 22:- But it knows any friend it has met once before:
- It never will look at a bribe:
- And in charity-meetings it stands at the door,
- And collects—though it does not subscribe.
The illustrations
A related debate is to what extent Holiday's illustrations should be considered when analyzing the poem. Oliver Sturm, who translated Carroll's ballad into German, assumes: "Carroll's productivity seems to have been strongly determined by the rhythm of the illustrations delivered [by Holiday]." Opponents claim that they deviate from the text in a number of places (for example, the Baker is supposed to have whiskers and hair, Fit the Fourth, but in the illustrations he is bald) and hence should be discounted. Others claim they were prepared with great cooperation from Carroll, and that the correspondence of letters can tell his opinion of each. Thus it would seem that Lewis Carroll did not intend care and hope from the repeating stanza to stand for two women, but was quite pleased with the interpretation after the fact. Contrariwise, Carroll suppressed an illustration of the Boojum itself, since he wanted the monster to remain undescribed (none of its features described in Fit the Third are physical).As a Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
illustrator, Holiday took reference to earlier artists and earlier styles, where allegorical figures (often women) depicted abstract concepts like care, hope, religion, liberty etc.
It has been suggested that the character identified as "Care" below is really the ship's figurehead (as shown in the first illustration), and that "Hope" is actually the Boots. Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
, who reviewed the book in 1876, suggested that "Hope" might be the Bonnet-maker. However, a shadowy figure making bonnets can be seen on the ship in the second illustration.
 "Hope" |
 "Care" |
A 1941 edition was illustrated by Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...
. Another was illustrated in 1975 by Ralph Steadman
Ralph Steadman
Ralph Steadman is a British cartoonist and caricaturist who is perhaps best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson.-Personal life:Steadman was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Towyn, North Wales...
.
Impact on literature
The Hunting of the Snark has inspired several works based on the poem. Michael EndeMichael Ende
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende was a German author of fantasy and children's literature. He is best known for his epic fantasy work The Neverending Story; other famous works include Momo and Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver...
translated the poem into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and wrote the opera based on it. The opera was first performed in the Prinzregenten theater in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
on January 16, 1988. In the mid-1980s, Mike Batt
Mike Batt
Michael Philip "Mike" Batt is a British songwriter, musician, producer and Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry...
produced a concept album and later a stage show based on the poem. A 1986 musical entitled Boojum! is loosely based on the poem. The musical was written by Martin Wesley-Smith
Martin Wesley-Smith
Martin Wesley-Smith is an Australian composer with an eclectic output ranging from children's songs to environmental events. He works in a range of musical styles, including choral music, operas, computer music, music theatre, chamber and orchestral music, and audiovisual pieces which bring words,...
and Peter Wesley-Smith. It also includes a pseudo-biography of Lewis Carroll and elements from the Alice series.
A number of books make references to the poem. Inspired by Carroll's poem,
Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
named his Yacht the Snark, and he described his voyage across the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
in the book titled The Cruise of the Snark
The Cruise of the Snark
The Cruise of the Snark is a non-fictional, illustrated book by Jack London chronicling his sailing adventure in 1907 across the south Pacific in his ketch the Snark. Accompanying London on this voyage was his wife Charmian and a small crew...
(1911). In Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine...
's In the Ocean of Night
In the Ocean of Night
In the Ocean of Night is a 1977 hard science fiction novel by Gregory Benford. It is the first novel in his Galactic Center Saga. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1977, and for the Locus Award the following year....
, the protagonist discovers an alien ship visiting the solar system and calls it "Snark" as he tries to track its movements. In Vonda McIntyre
Vonda McIntyre
Vonda Neel McIntyre is an American science fiction author.-Biography:Vonda N. McIntyre, daughter of H. Neel and Vonda B. Keith McIntyre, earned a degree in biology from the University of Washington in 1970. That same year, she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop, founded at the Clarion...
's novelization of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the second feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. The plot features James T...
, she reveals that the use of protomatter in the Genesis Device
Genesis Device
Genesis Device is the name for a recently-released game engine created by Luuk van Venrooij, based in the Netherlands. The Genesis Device engine was created in aspiration of games such as Oblivion, Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., with a purpose of allowing developers to use...
was made possible due to the discovery of sub-elementary particles, which were named by whimsical scientists as "snarks" and "boojums". In the "Uplift
Uplift Universe
The Uplift Universe is a fictional universe created by science fiction writer David Brin. A central feature in this universe is the process of biological uplift.His books which take place in this universe:* Sundiver...
" series of books by David Brin
David Brin
Glen David Brin, Ph.D. is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.-Biography:...
, the human and dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
heroes are travelling aboard the Streaker
Streaker
Streaker may refer to:* Someone who engages in streaking, purposely appearing and running nude in public* Streaker , a sailing dinghy* Streaker , a 1987 computer game published by Bulldog...
, a Snarkhunter class exploration ship. When Gillian Baskin, the captain pro tem of the Streaker, orders a counterattack against her pursuers, her officers protest that their ship is "only a snark." Gillian Baskin retorts, "This snark has grown into a boojum!" Other references to The Hunting of the Snark may be found elsewhere in these books. Characters in The Lyre of Orpheus
The Lyre of Orpheus (novel)
The Lyre of Orpheus, first published by Macmillan of Canada in 1988, is the last of the three connected novels of the Cornish Trilogy by Canadian novelist Robertson Davies...
, by Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
, often refer to the poem, and wonder whether the end of their quest to put on an opera will reveal a Snark or a Boojum. The Bellman and The Hunting of the Snark are referenced in Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
's The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots is the third book by Jasper Fforde and the continuation of the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next from The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book...
, his third Thursday Next
Thursday Next
Thursday Next is the main protagonist in a series of comic fantasy, alternate history novels by the British author Jasper Fforde. She was first introduced in Fforde's first published novel, The Eyre Affair, released on July 19, 2001 by Hodder & Stoughton. , the series comprises six books, in two...
book. In this novel the Term boojum refers to the annihilation of a character from the Book World. China Miéville
China Miéville
China Tom Miéville is an award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" , and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party...
's The Scar
The Scar
The Scar is the third novel written by China Miéville, a self-described "weird fiction" writer from London, England. The Scar won the 2003 British Fantasy Award and was shortlisted for the 2003 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Miéville won both these awards in 2001 for his previous novel, Perdido Street...
features a ship called the Castor (Latin for beaver), crewed by characters whose names reference the characters of Snark: for example Tinntinnabulum, meaning a tinkling of bells, as in the Bellman). There are numerous references to The Hunting of the Snark in the works of Robert Heinlein, particularly in The Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast (novel)
The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...
. Stefano Benni
Stefano Benni
Stefano Benni is an Italian satirical writer, poet and journalist. His books have been translated into around 20 foreign languages and scored notable commercial success...
, an Italian satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, has a character named boojum and a map of the Boojum brothers in his book Terra! (1983), translated into around seven foreign languages.
Gerald Durrell
Gerald Durrell
Gerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE was a naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter...
used quotes from the poem as epigraphs to the chapters of his book "Two in the bush".
"Snarks" is the popular nickname for the alien Zn'rx
Zn'rx
The Zn'rx are a fictional extraterrestrial race who have appeared in many Marvel Comics. Unpronounceable by human tongues, the Zn'rx are known better as "Snarks" among Earth's superheroes because they were nicknamed that way by a Kymellian called Whitey, who named them after the monster in Lewis...
, introduced in the pages the of the Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
title Power Pack
Power Pack
Power Pack is a fictional team of comic book superheroes consisting of four young siblings who appear in books published by Marvel Comics. They were created by writer Louise Simonson and artist June Brigman and first appeared in their own series in 1984. The series lasted 62 issues...
, wherein the nickname replaced the unpronounceable proper name. It was introduced to the human children characters by an alien of yet another race, who was a fan of Earthly literature.
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
divided the radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
into "fits", after a suggestion by Geoffrey Perkins
Geoffrey Perkins
Geoffrey Howard Perkins was a comedy producer, writer and performer, and an important figure in British comedy broadcasting. This was recognised in December 2008 when he was awarded with an Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award...
, inspired by the Hunting of the Snark. Additionally, in the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is stated that the answer to the "ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" is simply "42", the number which, as stated below, holds some unknown significance to Carroll.
In Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
's known space
Known Space
Known Space is the fictional setting of some dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories written by author Larry Niven. It has also in part been used as a shared universe in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-off anthologies sub-series....
universe, there is an alien species called Bandersnatchi
Bandersnatch (Known Space)
The Bandersnatch is a fictional alien species in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. The species is named for Lewis Carroll's Bandersnatch.-Characteristics:...
.
In John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
's SF novel Stand on Zanzibar
Stand on Zanzibar
Stand on Zanzibar is a dystopian New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award.-Description:A...
the phrase "I tell you three times" is used to force the semi-sentient computer Shalmaneser to accept information it claims is inconsistent with the real world. The character using it remarks "Someone around here must have had a sense of humor".
Episode 13 of the Japanese anime series Ghost Hound
Ghost Hound
is an anime TV series, created by Production I.G and Masamune Shirow, noted for being the creator of the Ghost in the Shell series. The original concept and design was first developed by Shirow in 1987...
is titled "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see." In this episode the main character, Tarō, meets a strange creature while searching for his sister's ghost in the "Unseen World". He asks the creature its name, to which it replies, "I am Snark".
In the fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
series A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire
A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the series in 1991 and the first volume was published in 1996. Originally planned as a trilogy, the series now consists of five published volumes; a further two...
by George R.R. Martin, a character named Tyrion Lannister jokes about being afraid of Snarks, referring to them as imaginary monsters of childhood. The first instance occurs in the first book of the series, A Game of Thrones
A Game of Thrones
A Game of Thrones is the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin. It was first published on 6 August 1996. The novel won the 1997 Locus Award, and was nominated for both the 1998 Nebula Award and the 1997 World Fantasy Award...
, and other instances occur throughout the series.
Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
and Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...
proposed an explanation in a text supplement in its second volume; in their version of events, the portal into which Alice Liddell
Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Liddell , known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice is said to be named after her.-Biography:...
first falls is the subject of an expedition carried out by the crew members in company of a lacemaker named "Miss Beever" and led by "The Reverend Dr. Eric Bellman". After disappearing into the hole, like Liddell they are found near a river bank months later, naked and suffering from exposure; unlike Liddell they are all hopelessly insane, and the Banker has become a photographic negative. When visited by Wilhemina Murray years later, in an asylum, Bellman refuses to explain the fate of the missing Baker other than mentioning that "... the last word he said was 'Boo'".
Roger Langridge
Roger Langridge
Roger Langridge is a New Zealand-born comics writer/artist/letterer, currently living in Britain.-Biography:Langridge originally came to public prominence most notably with the Judge Dredd Megazine series The Straitjacket Fits , a surreal, hallucinatory, convention-bending strip set in an insane...
's comic book Snarked refers to the poem, even including it with its illustrations in issue #0.
In The Consuming Fire, the second book in the Hunter Brown
Hunter Brown
Hunter Brown is a series of teen Christian fantasy books. The protagonist is a sixteen-year-old boy named Hunter Brown who joins a group called the Codebearers and fights an enemy called the Shadow. The first book was released in 2008, the second in the fall of 2009, and the third and final book...
series by Christopher and Allan Miller, there is a small, furry creature named Boojum who later turns out to be a Snark.
Other influences
Judge Merrick Garland of United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia CircuitUnited States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit known informally as the D.C. Circuit, is the federal appellate court for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Appeals from the D.C. Circuit, as with all the U.S. Courts of Appeals, are heard on a...
referred to the Bellman's Rule in his ruling in Parhat v. Gates
Parhat v. Gates
Parhat v. Gates No. 06-1397 is a petition for review under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 filed on behalf of Hozaifa Parhat, and six other Uyghur detainees held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.Susan Baker Manning, one of Parhat's...
, saying, "The government suggests that several of the assertions in the intelligence documents are reliable because they are made in at least three different documents ... We are not persuaded. Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true. In fact we have no basis for concluding that there are independent sources for the documents' thrice-made assertions".
Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States, in Medellin v. Texas, 128 S. Ct. 1346, 1381–82 wrote in dissent: "[I]t would be unrealistic to expect state parties to multilateral instruments like the VCCR to agree on explicit language specifying a treaty's domestic effect ... the absence or presence of language in a treaty about a provision's self-execution proves nothing at all. At best the Court is hunting the snark. At worst ..."
N. David Mermin
David Mermin
Nathaniel David Mermin is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Mermin-Wagner theorem and his application of the term "Boojum" to superfluidity, and for the quote "Shut up and calculate!"Together with Neil W...
named a phenomenon in superfluidity
Boojum (superfluidity)
In the physics of superfluidity, a boojum is a geometric pattern on the surface of one of the phases of superfluid helium-3, whose motion can result in the decay of a supercurrent. A boojum can result from a monopole singularity in the bulk of the liquid being drawn to, and then "pinned" on a...
after the Boojum.
The game Half-Life features a small, insect-like alien called the Snark as a weapon.
The Boojum tree
Boojum tree
Fouquieria columnaris, the Boojum tree or cirio is a tree in the family Fouquieriaceae, whose other members include the ocotillos. It is nearly endemic to the Baja California Peninsula, with only a small population in the Sierra Bacha of Sonora, Mexico...
, a bizarre kind of tree native to Baja California, was named after the Boojum in the poem.
There is a Snark as well as a JubJub Island and a Boojum Rock in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean.
In 1975 Arne Nordheim
Arne Nordheim
Arne Nordheim was a Norwegian composer who had since 1982 been living in the Norwegian State's honorary residence, Grotten, next to the Royal Palace in Oslo. Nordheim received numerous prizes for his compositions, and was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary...
, a composer from Norway, composed The Hunting of The Snark for trombone. The Return of The Snark for trombone and tape recorder was composed in 1987. In 2009, the jazz collective NYNDK produced The Hunting of the Snark which includes a variation on Nordheim's composition. And in 2010, Bajka's
Bajka (music)
Bajka is a female artist born in India and raised in Portugal and South Africa. She is a poet, singer, producer and songwriter. "Bajka" in some slavonic languages means "fable"....
In Wonderland was produced with eleven songs, among them one song for every "Fit" in Carroll's poem.
The British prog-rock band Henry Cow
Henry Cow
Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members...
's Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson is an English experimental music composer and performer, principally on reeds and keyboards. He is best known as one of the core members of the British avant-rock group Henry Cow, which he formed with Fred Frith in 1968...
wrote a song "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", featured on their first album, Legend. This song is the only cut on the album with discernible lyrics, and contains the line "That the Snark was a Boojum all can tell". Within the context of the whole lyric, and given the band's confrontational Marxist leanings at the time, this line would appear to be using the Snark/Boojum bait-and-switch as a metaphor for capitalism's failure; promising the fulfillment of human potential, but producing annihilation.
The Northrop SM-62 Snark
SM-62 Snark
-External links:** Air Force Magazine article about a Snark that was test-fired and rumored to have been found in Brazil** detailed article on Snark and the USAF school to train personnel for it...
was a United States cruise missile named after the Snark.
In the mathematical field of graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
, a snark
Snark (graph theory)
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a snark is a connected, bridgeless cubic graph with chromatic index equal to 4. In other words, it is a graph in which every vertex has three neighbors, and the edges cannot be colored by only three colors without two edges of the same color meeting at a...
is a connected
Connectivity (graph theory)
In mathematics and computer science, connectivity is one of the basic concepts of graph theory: it asks for the minimum number of elements which need to be removed to disconnect the remaining nodes from each other. It is closely related to the theory of network flow problems...
, bridgeless
Bridge (graph theory)
In graph theory, a bridge is an edge whose deletion increases the number of connected components. Equivalently, an edge is a bridge if and only if it is not contained in any cycle....
cubic graph
Cubic graph
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a cubic graph is a graph in which all vertices have degree three. In other words a cubic graph is a 3-regular graph. Cubic graphs are also called trivalent graphs....
with chromatic index equal to 4. There are various theorems and conjectures about this type of object.
Interpretations
Various theories have tried to elucidate the text or parts thereof.Richard Kelly theorizes that The Hunting of the Snark was "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".
Could the Baker be Carroll himself?
The text has a number of hints that suggest that Carroll intended for the character of the Baker to represent himself. The fact that his name is unknown to the other crew members (he forgets it) attests that some riddle is involved. It has been claimed that 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-GlassThrough the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
). However, there is no evidence to suggest Dodgson ever intended The White Knight to represent himself; it is simply an assumption that has been made often enough to gain acceptance as a fact. Lewis Carroll 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. Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
also suggests taking note of Rule 42 of the Code in the preface (No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm), Rule 42 in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
(All persons more than a mile high to leave the court), and the fact that Carroll referred to his age as 42 when he was still in his thirties. So while the evidence does not allow saying anything about the identity of the Baker, the conclusion is safe that the number 42
42 (number)
42 is the natural number immediately following 41 and directly preceding 43. The number has received considerable attention in popular culture as a result of its central appearance in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and...
seems to have had some sort of special significance for Carroll.
Hidden meanings?
As already stated, The Hunting of the Snark is unusual among Lewis Carroll's poems for 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:- 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.
No convincing theory yet explains it. (It is an allegory for civilizing both a person as well as a country - thimbles represent proper or taylored clothing; care, hope, & charm represents the introduction and teaching of proper manners; and railway-share & soap represents the taming of wilderness and wild person) In Holiday's illustrations, 'Hope' and 'Care' were depicted as beautiful feminine personifications, the former holding a large gardening-fork. In correspondence with Carroll, Holiday said that he had intended to add a third meaning to the double-meaning of 'with' in the second line of the stanza – as an action (with forks), as an emotion (with a feeling of hope) and as a description (in company with the personification of hope). Carroll later suggested that Holiday design, for a new edition of the book, a front cover depicting Hope, surrounded by "a border of interlaced forks", and a back cover depicting Care surrounded by "a shower of thimbles". This idea was not carried out, as the book was not re-issued. Notably, the implication of this image would add a moral message to the story; though it starts with Fork and Hope, symbolising a courageous forward movement in the explorers, it would end with Thimbles and Care, implying that, having learned from the tragedies suffered in the poem, the explorers would become more careful in their ordinary lives.
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!" According to Gardner, there are more than three such denials on record. By the Bellman's rule-of-three, it follows that if the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson said he did not know what the unimaginable something is, then he really did not know.
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:- "It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,
- And seemed almost too good to be true.
- Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:
- Then the ominous words "It's a Boo-"
- Then, silence.
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 three pairs of boots one over the other (Fit the First, and this also appears clearly in the illustrations). However, at the end of the poem Lewis Carroll- the impartial narrator- writes "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see".
See also
- SnarkSnark-Fictional creatures:* Snark , a fictional animal species in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark * Snark , fictional small, bug-like species of alien used as a weapon...
- Snark, a 1974 text gameText gameA text game or text-based game is a video game that uses text characters instead of bitmapped or vector graphics. Text-based games were common from 1970 to 1990, but are still used today.- Overview :...
inspired by the poem. - The Hunting of the Snark MusicalThe Hunting of the Snark (musical)The Hunting of the Snark is a musical based on Lewis Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark", written by composer Mike Batt.-History:The musical began life in 1984 as a costumed concert with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, conducted by Mike Batt and starring Paul Jones as the Baker...
, written by Mike BattMike BattMichael Philip "Mike" Batt is a British songwriter, musician, producer and Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry...
based on the original nonsense poem.
Media
External links
- The Hunting of the Snark downloadable formats from Project Gutenberg
- The Hunting of the Snark in HTML with original illustrations (mirrored and extended version with line numbering, Carroll's original dedication to Gertrude Chataway and Carroll's Easter greeting)
- The Hunting of the Snark in BD form, with commentary for each stanza
- A catalogue raisonné of illustrated Snarks
- John Tufail: The Illuminated Snark. An enquiry into the relationship between text and illustration in
'The Hunting of the Snark' . 2004, 36 pages., (pg. 29: Examples for the usage of simulacraSimulacrumSimulacrum , from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god...
) - Catalogue of the main illustrated editions of 'The Hunting of the Snark' https://sites.google.com/site/lewiscarrollillustratedsnark/home?pli=1