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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Part I, Chapter 1: Nao
Explanation and Analysis—Marcel Proust:
Marcel Proust—France’s famed 20th-century writer—offers a through-line of allusions for Nao’s diary entries. The teenage storyteller fills her thoughts in a doctored copy of Proust's memoir-novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, explaining the trick in some of her earliest entries in Part 1:
And after that, every time I took out the book, I’d stare at the title and start to wonder. I mean, Marcel Proust must be pretty important if even someone like me had heard of him, even if I didn’t know who he was at first and thought he was a celebrity chef or a French fashion designer.
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Explanation and Analysis—Gulliver’s Travels:
Eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift graces Nao’s diary entries in Part I as she explains to the reader the backstory of her book’s deceptive cover. Perusing among the bookshop for novel-themed diaries, she finds À la recherche du temps perdu tucked among other famous titles for sale—one of which happens to be Swift’s landmark novel:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Actually, I didn’t know what it meant either, since my ability to speak French is nonexistent. There were a bunch of books with different titles for sale. Some of them were in English, like Great Expectations and Gulliver’s Travels, which were okay, but I thought it would be better to buy a title I couldn’t read, since knowing the meaning might possibly interfere with my own creative expression.
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Part I, Chapter 2: Ruth
Explanation and Analysis—Japanese Classics:
A puzzled and captivated Ruth thinks back to famous Japanese works in Part I after finishing the first entries in Nao’s diary. Remembering her college classes, she summons the names of literary monuments as she tries to translate Nao’s Japanese:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It had been years since Ruth had lived in Japan, and while she still had a reasonable command of the spoken language, her vocabulary was out of date. In university, Ruth had studied the Japanese classics—The Tale of Genji, Noh drama, The Pillow Book—literature going back hundreds and even thousands of years, but she was only vaguely familiar with Japanese pop culture.
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Part I, Chapter 6: Ruth
Explanation and Analysis—Dōgen:
In Part I, Nao’s diary entries prompt the novel’s brief digression about Dōgen. A Tale for the Time Being briefly turns away from Haruki #2’s suicide attempt and Ruth’s move from New York City, explaining to the reader the Buddhist conception of free will:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Zen Master Dōgen uses the phrase in “The Merits of Home-Leaving,” which is the title of Chapter 86 of his Shōbōgenzō. This is the chapter in which he praises his young monks for their commitment to a path of awakening and explicates the granular nature of time: the 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will.
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Part I, Chapter 7: Nao
Explanation and Analysis—Kanno Sugako:
Nao alludes to Kanno Sugako—a Japanese feminist journalist—in Part I of her diary entries. Describing the names on her family tree, Nao shares how Kanno Sugako had been an inspiration for her great-grandmother—so much so that the political leader influences Jiko's daughter’s own name.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Jiko named her younger daughter Sugako after Kanno Sugako, another famous anarchist chick and hero of Jiko’s and the first woman ever to be hanged for treason in Japan. Nowadays people would call Kanno Sugako a terrorist because she plotted to assassinate the emperor with a bomb, but listening to Jiko talk about her, you can tell she doesn’t really buy it. Jiko really adored her.
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Explanation and Analysis—Hobbes:
In a work scattered with references to the western philosophical tradition, Thomas Hobbes earns a passing mention as Nao’s father obsesses over his origami figures. The English political philosopher’s writings do not find much of an intellectual foothold in Haruki #2’s mind. They do, however, make for stunning paper beetles:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dad says thin paper is easier to fold, especially if you’re making something complicated like a Trypoxylus dichotomus, which is a Japanese rhinoceros beetle, or a Mantis religiosa, which is a praying mantis. He only used the minds he didn’t like for folding, so we ended up with lots of insects made from Nietzsche and Hobbes.
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Part II, Chapter 12: Nao
Explanation and Analysis—Hideki Tojo:
Jiko alludes to Japan’s then-prime minister while recounting her son’s time in military training. While attending the pageant for new war recruits, she catches sight of Hideki Tojo among those in attendance and seethes with hate:
Unlock with LitCharts A+One of the boys, Haruki’s classmate, gave a speech. ‘We, of course, do not expect to return alive,’ he said. They knew they would die. We had all heard about the mass suicides of soldiers at a place called Attu. Gyokusai, 137 they called it. Insanity, but by then there was no stopping. The prime minister was there. Tojo Hideki. It is not true, what I said before, because I hated him. He was a war criminal, and after the war, they hanged him. I was so happy. I wept for joy when I heard he was dead. Then I shaved my head and took a vow to stop hating.
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Part III, Chapter 1: Nao
Explanation and Analysis—9/11:
In Part III, Nao alludes to a global tragedy still fresh in collective memory. Recounting her dad’s history of suicide attempts, she draws a line from the new chapter of his self-harm to the night they witness the September 11th terrorist attacks:
Unlock with LitCharts A+September 11 is one of those crazy moments in time that everybody who happened to be alive in the world remembers. You remember it exactly. September 11 is like a sharp knife slicing through time. It changed everything.
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Part IV, Chapter 4: Ruth
Explanation and Analysis—Schrödinger’s Cat:
Part I gives just the briefest of mentions to Oliver’s cat, Schrödinger—whom he and Ruth respectively nickname Pesto and Pest. But the allusion reveals deeper meanings by the novel’s end. In Part IV, Ruth revisits the significance of the pet’s name:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Of course she knew about Schrödinger’s cat. Their cat was named Schrödinger, after all, even though the name hadn’t stuck. But, if pressed, she would have to confess that the name Schrödinger always made her feel vaguely anxious, in much the same way that the name Proust did.
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