The Hunting of the Snark Becker Lennon, the poem's "motif of loss of name or identity" is typical of Carroll's work. Richard Kelly writes that the poem contains a "theme of annihilation." Furthermore, Edward Guiliano feels 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. According to him, a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert's Bab Ballads on "The Hunting of the Snark", based on the fact that Carroll was well-acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age. In response to various
The Betrothed (poem) The Betrothed (poem) "The Betrothed" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in book form in "Departmental Ditties" (1886). It is a tongue-in-cheek work by the young bachelor Kipling, who affected a very worldly-wise stance. In it, he takes as his epigraph the report of evidence in a breach of promise case, ""You must choose between me and your cigar"". The poem simply has a narrator musing on the difference between his fiancée Maggie and his habit of smoking cigars: He weighs up Maggie's looks, and what she will be at fifty; the limitations of monogamy against "a harem