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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
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—An Army in Pursuit:
When Provis is recounting what fleeing from the prison-barge he was being held on felt like, he alludes to images of the British army pursuing him through the fog using powerful sensory language. Provis's intense fear of capture makes him feel like a battalion of men is chasing him in Chapter 3, as he tells Pip:
“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid hands on – and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night – coming up in order, Damn ’em, with their tramp, tramp – I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day.
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Book 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—A Little Bull:
When he recounts how his family and their friends treated Pip at home, Dickens uses a simile to liken the little boy to a bull in a Spanish bull-ring. When the Gargerys have company over in chapter 4 and Pip is forced to sit at the table with them, they will not give him a moment's respite from criticism:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.
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Explanation and Analysis—Mr Wopsle Says Grace:
Dickens makes an allusion employing a parody of the stereotypical English churchman in Chapter 4, when Pip describes how the officious Mr. Wopsle says grace at his family's table:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation — as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third — and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.
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Book 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—A Bramble-Bush:
Although education in Victorian England was one of the political priorities of the monarchy and the government, learning to read was by no means a guaranteed skill for Victorian working-class children. Dickens likens Pip's efforts to succeed in getting an education against difficult odds to crawling through a blackberry bush in Chapter 7:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Catechism :
In Chapter 7, Dickens makes a verbally ironic allusion to a Biblical source, illustrating Pip's naivety and ignorance with a clever joke. Pip tells the reader that as a boy he had trouble understanding religious language:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Neither were my notions of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate; I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I was to “walk in the same all the days of my life,” laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.
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Book 1, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Orlick the Villain:
Joe Gargery's "obstinate" journeyman Orlick is revealed to be a violent villain long after he is first introduced. Dickens foreshadows this, however, with two allusions. In Chapter 15, Pip describes the "lazy" and unpleasant Orlick with reference to two famous "outcast" figures, rejected from society because of their hand in the deaths of good people:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back.
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Book 2, Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Worshipping the Hem:
Dickens uses a biblical allusion, "worshipping the hem of her dress," to indicate Pip's devotion to Estella as he follows her around Satis House upon his return in Chapter 29:
Unlock with LitCharts A+So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine.
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