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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
Key Examples in Into the Wild
Chapter 4 - Detrital Wash
Explanation and Analysis—Which Governs Least:
In Chapter 4, Chris finds an abandoned Nissan Datson at Detrital Wash. In trying to start the car while the engine was wet, he drains the battery. Though he knows he would need help to get the car running, he worries about what questions a police officer might ask if they came to his aid: the car's registration and Chris's license are both expired, and Chris was trespassing when he found the car. Chris considers how he would respond to a police officer asking him to explain himself, making an allusion to Thoreau:
Truthful responses to these queries were not likely to be well received by the rangers. McCandless could endeavor to explain that he answered to statutes of a higher order—that as a latter-day adherent of Henry David Thoreau, he took as gospel the essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and thus considered it his moral responsibility to flout the laws of the state. It was improbable, however, that deputies of the federal government would share his point of view.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9 - Davis Gulch
Explanation and Analysis—Yawp!:
Krakauer devotes Chapter 9 to the story of Everett Ruess, a hitchhiker and photographer who traveled around the southwest in the 1930s. In the chapter, Krakauer includes a long quotation describing Everett, written by the author Wallace Stegner:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"Deliberately he punished his body, strained his endurance, tested his capacity for strenuousness. He took out deliberately over trails that Indians and old timers warned him against. He tackled cliffs that more than once left him dangling halfway between talus and rim….From his camps by the water pockets or the canyons or high on the timbered ridges of Navajo Mountain he wrote long, lush, enthusiastic letters to his family and friends, damning the stereotypes of civilization, chanting his barbaric adolescent yawp into the teeth of the world."
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—NEMO 1934:
Chapter 9 tells the story of Everett Ruess, a mountaineer who traveled around the American southwest in the 1930s. Krakauer describes Everett's similarity to Chris through the "nom de plume" that each liked to carve in public spaces. Everett's nom de plume was an allusion to Captain Nemo. Here, Krakauer describes each of them inscribing their aliases:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Everett Ruess carved his nom de plume into the canyon wall below a panel of Anasazi pictographs, and he did so again in the doorway of a small masonry structure built by the Anasazi for storing grain. “NEMO 1934,” he scrawled, no doubt moved by the same impulse that compelled Chris McCandless to inscribe “Alexander Supertramp/May 1992” on the wall of the Sushana bus—an impulse not so different, perhaps, from that which inspired the Anasazi to embellish the rock with their own now-indecipherable symbols.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12 – Annandale
Explanation and Analysis—Reaganite Thoreauvian:
In Chapter 12, set in 1988, Chris grows more angry with injustice and its prevalence across the world. He enrolls in more classes at Emory on poverty and discrimination. But Krakauer clarifies that Chris's politics cannot be boiled down to simply left or right, which he shows through an allusion to Thoreau:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Indeed, he delighted in ridiculing the policies of the Democratic Party and was a vocal admirer of Ronald Reagan. At Emory he went so far as to co-found a College Republican Club. Chris’s seemingly anomalous political positions were perhaps best summed up by Thoreau’s declaration in “Civil Disobedience”: “I heartily accept the motto—‘That government is best which governs least.’ ” Beyond that his views were not easily characterized.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Old Artificer:
In Chapter 12, Chris drives up the West Coast toward Canada. Krakauer describes his long trip through an extended allusion to the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by the Irish author James Joyce:
Unlock with LitCharts A+From Orick, McCandless continued north up the coast. He passed through Pistol River, Coos Bay, Seal Rock, Manzanita, Astoria; Hoquiam, Humptulips, Queets; Forks, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Seattle. “He was alone,” as James Joyce wrote of Stephen Dedalus, his artist as a young man. “He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”
Related Themes:
