The Hunting of the Snark

Summary

A company led by the Bellman arrives to hunt an elusive creature called the Snark. The crew consists of people and an animal whose names or occupations begin with the letter B, including a Baker, a Butcher, a Banker, a Barrister, and a Beaver. Their skills do not add up to a practical expedition. The Bellman has supplied a blank map and a collection of authoritative pronouncements, while the Baker has forgotten so much that even his name is uncertain. The Bellman describes the supposed characteristics of Snarks and explains the danger of encountering a particular kind called a Boojum. The Baker reveals that an uncle warned him about that possibility: meeting a Boojum would cause him to vanish. The warning does not stop the hunt. The party proceeds with methods whose verbal precision contrasts with their evident absurdity. The expedition produces a series of encounters rather than steady progress toward a known object. The Butcher and Beaver, initially an alarming combination, develop a friendship through a lesson full of extravagant calculation. The Barrister dreams of a courtroom in which a Snark takes over legal proceedings, confusing familiar professional authority. The Banker meets a Bandersnatch and returns profoundly altered, unable to offer useful guidance to his companions. At last the Baker appears to discover their quarry. The others hear and see enough to hurry after him, but arrive too late. He disappears in the middle of an attempted announcement. The final explanation is that the Snark was a Boojum. The poem gives this statement the force of a conclusion without supplying the kind of evidence or natural history a conventional adventure would offer. Carroll organizes the narrative into eight sections called fits, using vigorous rhythms, repeated phrases, invented words, and collisions between grammar and sense. The work rewards reading aloud and precise attention to claims. Its unsettling ending should not be explained away, but neither does it establish one hidden allegorical meaning. Students can enjoy the nonsense while asking how repetition creates apparent authority, why rules need a purpose, and how an improbable friendship differs from the expedition's increasingly empty pursuit.

Plot or Argument

• An unlikely expedition

  The Bellman organizes a hunt using a blank map and confident instructions that do not establish reliable knowledge.

• Warnings and encounters

  The Baker explains the Boojum danger, while friendship, a legal dream, and a frightening encounter interrupt the search.

• The vanishing

  The Baker seems to find the quarry, but disappears; the poem ends with the declaration that the Snark was a Boojum.

Characters

• The Bellman, leader

  An authoritative organizer whose repeated claims exceed his practical guidance.

• The Baker, hunter

  A forgetful crew member warned that a Boojum would make him vanish.

• The Beaver, crew member

  An unlikely participant who develops a friendship with the Butcher.

• The Butcher, crew member

  A hunter whose strange lesson brings him closer to the Beaver.

Lessons

• Repetition is not proof

  The Bellman’s declarations gain force through recurrence. A repeated assertion still requires evidence when it is offered as knowledge.

  • Why does the Bellman sound authoritative?
  • Which instructions help the crew and which only sound helpful?

• Nonsense needs exact reading

  Absurdity depends on recognizable grammar, rhythm, and expectations. A reader must first notice the rule before understanding the joke that unsettles it.

  • How can a grammatical sentence fail to make practical sense?
  • What does the blank map reveal about the expedition?

• Friendship interrupts the hunt

  The Butcher and Beaver acquire something real in the middle of an uncertain quest. Their relationship provides a different kind of outcome from capture or success.

  • What makes the Beaver’s friendship an achievement?
  • Can a failed project still contain something worth preserving?

Context

Victorian nonsense writing draws energy from schooling, professional vocabulary, rules, and the expectation that respectable language should make the world intelligible. Carroll’s mathematics gives these verbal games unusual precision.

Composition

First published in 1876; the work is divided into eight fits.

Reception

The poem has become a major example of literary nonsense and continues to invite divergent interpretations of its unsettling ending.

Comparisons

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

  Both expose unstable authority through precise language and extravagant nonsense.

• Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

  Compare invented vocabulary and apparently rigorous rules that do not guarantee intelligible purposes.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Read the verse aloud to hear how rhythm carries unlikely statements.
• Distinguish what the crew knows from what the Bellman merely repeats.
• Notice genuine friendship without forcing the whole poem into a single moral allegory.

Key terms and names

Nonsense verse

Poetry that deliberately disrupts normal sense while using recognizable verbal patterns.

Fit

The poem’s name for one of its eight divisions, also an older term for a section of verse.

Assertion

A claim put forward as true, which is not itself evidence for that truth.

Portmanteau

A word formed by combining sounds or meanings from other words.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension The Bellman organizes a hunt using a blank map and confident instructions that do not establish reliable knowledge: what happens, and why?
2. Comprehension By the final Fit the crew has found its quarry. Who meets it, what becomes of him, and why is that ending both funny and unsettling?
3. Interpretation Why does the Bellman sound authoritative?
4. Interpretation How can a grammatical sentence fail to make practical sense?
5. Big Question What makes the Beaver’s friendship an achievement?
6. Big Question The Bellman says that what he tells you three times is true. Where in Scripture or ordinary life are we asked to test a claim instead of accepting it because it is repeated?

Faith Connections

• Proverbs 14:15 (Scripture)

  The distinction between credulity and careful judgment can frame a discussion of the Bellman’s authority.

• Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (Scripture)

  The Beaver and Butcher offer an occasion to consider mutual help, without claiming the poem is a biblical allegory.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Carroll’s nonsense invites careful distinctions between verbal confidence, justified inference, and the purposes of collective action.

Rhetorical device: Repetition. The Bellman repeats confident statements until the form of certainty begins to substitute for evidence.

Debate: Resolved: Repeating a claim cannot make it true.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how one repeated phrase or absurd rule shapes the reader’s trust in the expedition.

Comparison with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Alice argues with creatures whose rules make no sense, while the Snark crew obeys a Bellman whose rules make no sense. Compare how each work uses nonsense logic, and decide which one gives its reader more reason to question authority.

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Explain how one repeated phrase or absurd rule shapes the reader’s trust in the expedition.

• Classroom

  Create an evidence chart connecting three specific episodes to the central question: Repeating a claim cannot make it true.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between two readers who disagree about this work. Refer to specific actions or arguments rather than inventing quotations.

Further Reading