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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
Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—Other Voices:
In describing his own feelings while listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, the narrator uses personification and makes an allusion to the late-medieval poet Dante Alighieri:
The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music but descended, like Dante, into its depths. And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was a slower tempo and a cave and I entered it and looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual as full of Weltschmerz as flamenco [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—Louis Armstrong:
In addition to hundreds of lightbulbs, the narrator has a radio phonograph to play music on, and he has goals of obtaining four more. In outlining his plans, he alludes to the jazz musician Louis Armstrong and to the classic jazz song “What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue”:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now I have one radio-phonograph [...] I’d like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing “What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue”—all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he’s made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he’s unaware that he is invisible.
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Explanation and Analysis—Tradition of Tinkers:
In describing his own ingenuity, the narrator alludes to various American inventors:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And maybe I’ll invent a gadget to place my coffee pot on the fire while I lie in bed, and even invent a gadget to warm my bed—like the fellow I saw in one of the picture magazines who made himself a gadget to warm his shoes! Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a “thinker-tinker.” Yes, I’ll warm my shoes; they need it, they’re usually full of holes. I’ll do that and more.
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Booker T. Washington:
After being invited to present a speech on the topic of humility before a group of socially prominent white men, the narrator is asked to fight other young Black men in a “battle royal.” In describing this pivotal event in his adolescence, the narrator alludes to Booker T. Washington, an educator, orator, and African American community leader prominent between the late 19th century and early 20th century:
Unlock with LitCharts A+No one could mistake their toughness. And besides, I suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In those pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. Washington. But the other fellows didn’t care too much for me either, and there were nine of them. I felt superior to them in my way, and I didn’t like the manner in which we were all crowded together into the servants’ elevator. Nor did they like my being there.
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Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Recounting a past conversation he had with Mr. Norton while driving him around the campus, the narrator alludes to 19th-century American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, for whom Ralph Ellison was, in fact, named:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“You have studied Emerson, haven’t you?”
“Emerson, sir?”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
I was embarrassed because I hadn’t. “Not yet, sir. We haven’t come to him yet.”
“No?” he said with a note of surprise. “Well, never mind. I am a New Englander, like Emerson. You must learn about him, for he was important to your people. He had a hand in your destiny. Yes, perhaps that is what I mean. I had a feeling that your people were somehow connected with my destiny. That what happened to you was connected with what would happen to me …”
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Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—The Founder:
At the sermon presented in the campus chapel, the narrator listens to a speech by Reverend Homer A. Barbee, from Chicago. In this darkly ironic scene, Barbee lavishes praise on the college’s founder, alluding to the Biblical figure of Moses:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And then his great struggle beginning. Picture it, my young friends: The clouds of darkness all over the land, black folk and white folk full of fear and hate, wanting to go forward, but each fearful of the other. A whole region is caught in a terrible tension. Everyone is perplexed with the question of what must be done to dissolve this fear and hatred that crouched over the land like a demon waiting to spring, and you know how he came and showed them the way.
Explanation and Analysis—Horatio Alger:
In a deeply ironic passage that is dense with allusions and metaphors, the narrator describes a sermon at the college chapel, which is attended by the school’s wealthy white donors:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Here upon this stage the black rite of Horatio Alger was performed to God’s own acting script, with millionaires come down to portray themselves; not merely acting out the myth of their goodness, and wealth and success and power and benevolence and authority in cardboard masks, but themselves, these virtues concretely! Not the wafer and the wine, but the flesh and the blood, vibrant and alive, and vibrant even when stooped, ancient and withered. (And who, in face of this, would not believe? Could even doubt?)
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—A Frantic Whale:
Dr. Bledsoe, president of the unnamed Black college, sends the narrator to work in New York for the summer, though he secretly plans to expel him permanently. Upon experiencing the train in New York City for the first time, the narrator uses a simile and allusion to describe the busy and disorienting scene:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale. Wrestling with my bags, I swept along with the crowd, up the stairs into the hot street. I didn’t care where I was, I would walk the rest of the way.
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Totem and Taboo:
After the narrator presents his letters of introduction from Dr. Bledsoe addressed to the offices of various prominent men of business and industry, he is surprised to receive no responses. He then makes his way to the office of the final remaining addressee, Mr. Emerson, who runs an import business. At the office, he meets an effeminate young man whom be mistakenly believes is Mr. Emerson’s secretary but is in fact his son. In his depiction of Mr. Emerson’s office, Ellison alludes to Totem and Taboo, a book written by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I went over and took a teakwood chair with cushions of emerald-green silk, sitting stiffly with my brief case across my knees. He must have been sitting there when I came in, for on a table that held a beautiful dwarf tree I saw smoke rising from a cigarette in a jade ash tray. An open book, something called Totem and Taboo, lay beside it. I looked across to a lighted case of Chinese design which held delicate-looking statues of horses and birds, small vases and bowls, each set upon a carved wooden base.
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Epilogue
Explanation and Analysis—The Grand Inquisition:
In the prologue, the narrator alludes to various historical incidents of violent persecution as he reflects upon his own internalized feelings of guilt and shame stemming from others’ mistreatment of him:
Unlock with LitCharts A+That is the real soul-sickness, the spear in the side, the drag by the neck through the mob-angry town, the Grand Inquisition, the embrace of the Maiden, the rip in the belly with the guts spilling out, the trip to the chamber with the deadly gas that ends in the oven so hygienically clean—only it’s worse because you continue stupidly to live. But live you must, and you can either make passive love to your sickness or burn it out and go on to the next conflicting phase.
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