A rhetorical question is a question that is asked for effect or to make a point, rather than to elicit an actual answer. The Walrus asked a rhetorical question in the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll. The question was "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax Of cabbages and kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings." The Walrus did not expect an answer to this question, but used it as a way to introduce a topic for discussion.