Hunting Of The Snark Analysis 6q712a

The Hunting of the Snark - Analysis Lewis Carroll The crew consists of ten , whose descriptions all begin with the letter B: a Bellman (the leader), a Boots, a Bonnet-maker, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiardmarker, 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

Plot 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. 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,[4] 'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see'.

Themes 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 selfnullifying 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 aphasia.[5]

Structure

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The poem has some aspects characteristic of much of Carroll's poetry: 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"): 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 Holiday'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[6] 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 acrostics of the child's name. Additionally, Carroll inserted on his own expense an "Easter Greeting"[7] 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.[8]

Origins

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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".[9] Gardner gives half a dozen examples. Here is how Carroll "explained" the Snark in 1887: I was walking on a hillside,[10] 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.[11] 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 Wilcox. 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, breathe fresh air. Connections In the preface to the Snark, Carroll, making fun of his recycling for the third time the first stanza of "Jabberwocky", 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 age of Sylvie and Bruno Concluded that sharply contradicts all the previous evasions and outright denials in Carroll's letters: 3

"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".[12] 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".[13] 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 defence as well, besides finding the verdict and ing the sentence.

Influences Some literary critics feel 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. Edward Guiliano[14] 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.

Bellman’s Rule of Three Another[clarification needed] rule that has given rise to widespread speculation is the Bellman's rule-of-three: What I tell you three times is true.[citation needed] 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 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.

Interpretations

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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".[31] Edwin Torrey and Judy Miller suggested that the poem is based on the life and death of Carroll's uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, one of the Commissioners in Lunacy, who had been killed by an asylum inmate in May 1873.[32]

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.[17] The fact that his name is unknown to the other crew (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 LookingGlass). 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 because it was repeated more than three times. 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.[citation needed]

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; 5

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 tailored clothing; care, hope, & charm represents the introduction and teaching of proper manners; and railwayshare & 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".[33] 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[34] something is, then he really did not know. [edit]

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. 6

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.[35] It is worth mentioning that the Boots is the most mysterious of the crew . 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 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”.

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