Tyler van Opstal "Hunting for Meaning"

     My favorite story from Lewis Carroll is his 1876 The Hunting of the Snark, subtitled as An Agony in 8 Fits. It is a nonsense poem, with Carroll denying to know the meaning of the poem and the plot having little semblance of anything rational. As C.S. Lewis laments however, literature is subject to the most monstrous exegesis ("Unreal Estates" in On Stories) and this has only encouraged scholars to delve deeply into it, searching for some meaning that Carroll either did not know or refused to share. The poem is fairly short, a mere 31 pages in my reproduction copy of an early edition and less in my omnibus volume of Carroll's work. My own interpretation of the story has changed several times through the years, and I'll embarrass myself with my current one after sharing some of the interpretations others have arrived at.

    One of the generally accepted things about The Hunting of the Snark is that it is a tragedy. This view began with the original illustrator Henry Holliday (at least 13 others have illustrated later editions of the Hunting, including Tove Jansson of Moomin fame) and has continued with many scholars. There are two predominant theories as to why Lewis may have written a tragedy, either as response to the death of his godson to Tuberculosis or as a response to the death of his uncle (an inspector) at the hands of an asylum patient, both of which happened within a year of him beginning the poem. My own copy of the poem claims the former, and that the death of his godson "had shattered [Carroll's] religious beliefs thoroughly." An interesting idea shared by some scholar's theories, who posit that The Hunting of the Snark is a tale of the religiously unsettling ideas found in science. But first editions of the Hunting included a copy of his religious tract An Easter Greeting, a strange inclusion if Carroll had indeed given up on religion. Or perhaps he had and the inclusion of both the Greeting and the Hunting were intended to let readers make their own choice. Other ideas about what tragedy might be portrayed in the Hunting are that of tuberculosis, or of the annihilation of identity that humans can face, or of existential angst and the question of the Absolute.

    My current view of The Hunting of the Snark, which is subject to change at any point and has been colored by a great number of myth talks by Drs. Thompson and Redick and a general happy mood in my life, is that the Hunting is not a tragedy, nor is it about any sort of annihilation or existential questions (at least, not any that need answering). Rather, I think it is the story of a person's life told as a myth that can be the lives of all people. The ship departs with not all of the crew members quite ready, nor knowledgeable of who they are or what they seek, and some of them feeling entirely out of place. Throughout the journey there are friendships made, many joint hardships suffered, and people lost. In all of it, none of the crewmembers have any real idea of what they're seeking- what definitions they offer are painfully obtuse and contradictory, the explanations of people who don't know but feel like they really ought to- and in the end there is triumph as they find a Boojum, which vanishes a man but is never seen. I believe this is the Monomyth of Campbell, the tale of reluctant and often foolish heroes who venture out into the world unknowing and uncertain before they conquer challenges and eventually leave the epic world to return to their mundane pre-existence.