The Hunting of the Snark Gardner sees the poem as dealing with existential angst, and states that the Baker may be Carroll's satire of himself, pointing to the fact that the Baker was named after a beloved uncle, as was Carroll, and that the two were around the same age at the time of the writing of the poem. Alternatively, Larry Shaw of the fan magazine "Inside and Science Fiction Advertiser" suggests that the Boots, being the Snark, actually murdered the Baker. Also references to religious issues had been suggested, like the Baker's 42 boxes being a reference to Thomas Cranmer's "Forty-Two Articles" with a
Lewis Carroll of the subconscious", as well as seeing it as a satire upon contemporary mathematical advances. The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed "Alice in Wonderland" so much that she commanded that he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants". Dodgson himself