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
The Spider and the Fly (poem) Lewis Carroll was readying "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" for publication he replaced a parody he had made of a negro minstrel song with a parody of Howitt's poem. "The Mock Turtle's Song", in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", is a parody of Howitt's poem; it mimics the meter and rhyme scheme, and parodies the first line, but not the subject matter, of the original. The Spider and the Fly (poem) The Spider and the Fly is a poem by Mary Howitt (1799–1888), published in 1828. The first line of the poem is "'Will you walk into my parlour?' said