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Alliteration
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 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Country Eyes:
In the first chapter of Part One, Sal meets Dean and his wife, Marylou, whom he describes with imagery and similes:
Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare because she was in an evil gray New York pad that she'd heard about back West, and waiting like a longbodied emaciated Modigliani surrealist woman in a serious room.
Part 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Eminent Peril:
In Part 1, Chapter 7, Sal moves in with a writer friend, and he describes the situation with two literary allusions.
Unlock with LitCharts A+The following ten days were, as W. C. Fields said, "fraught with eminent peril"—and mad. I moved in with Roland Major [...] We each had a bedroom, and there was a kitchenette with food in the icebox, and a huge living room where Major sat in his silk dressing gown composing his latest Hemingwayan short story—a choleric, red-faced, pudgy hater of everything, who could turn on the warmest and most charming smile in the world when real life confronted him sweetly in the night.
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Part 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Dostoevski:
Sal is well-read, as writers tend to be, but his friends aren't all as interested in literature as he is. When they work as guards at the barracks, Remi alludes to Fyodor Dostoevsky (author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, among many other novels and stories) to describe their supervisor's appearance, but is more interested in Sal's anecdotes about the Russian author than Dostoevsky's literary genius.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Remi] asked me, "What's the name of that Russian author you're always talking about—the one who put the newspapers in his shoe and walked around in a stovepipe hat he found in a garbage pail?" This was an exaggeration of what I'd told Remi of Dostoevski. "Ah, that's it—that's it—Dostioffski."
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Part 1, Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Reading the Landscape:
In Chapter 14 of Part 1, in addition to making another literary allusion, Sal builds a metaphor that compares staring out of his bus window to reading.
Unlock with LitCharts A+I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, "Le Grand Meaulnes" by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along.
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Part 2, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Rollo Greb:
In Chapter 4 of Part 2, Sal goes to a party thrown by a man named Rollo Greb, whom he describes with an allusion and metaphorical language.
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Greb] played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn't give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy.
Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Old Bull Lee:
In Chapter 6 of Part 2, Sal travels to New Orleans with Dean and Ed Dunkel to see his old friend, Bull Lee. Sal describes Bull with a metaphor, and he also relays a literary allusion Bull makes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Bull called [his son, Ray] "the Little Beast," after W. C. Fields. Bull came driving into the yard and unrolled himself from the car bone by bone, and came over wearily, wearing glasses, felt hat, shabby suit, long, lean, strange, and laconic, saying, "Why, Sal, you finally got here; let's go in the house and have a drink."
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Part 3, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Angel of Terror:
Sal describes yet more of Dean's skilled but irresponsibly fast driving in Chapter 9 of Part 3. His description involves a simile, a metaphor, and precise verbs that allow the reader to imagine Dean's eager yet deliberate maneuvers.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dean came up on lines of cars like the Angel of Terror. He almost rammed them along as he looked for an opening. He teased their bumpers, he eased and pushed and craned around to see the curve, then the huge car leaped to his touch and passed, and always by a hair we made it back to our side as other lines filed by in the opposite direction and I shuddered. I couldn't take it any more.
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Part 3, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Traveling Salesman:
In Chapter 11 of Part 3, Sal's descriptions of his travels become melancholy. This tone is communicated with a simile in which Sal compares himself to a traveling salesman who sells something no one wants to buy.
Unlock with LitCharts A+In the misty night we crossed Toledo and went onward across old Ohio. I realized I was beginning to cross and recross towns in America as though I were a traveling salesman—raggedy travelings, bad stock, rotten beans in the bottom of my bag of tricks, nobody buying.
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Part 4, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Shepherds:
In Chapter 6 of Part 4, Sal drives through Mexico as his friends sleep. He sees shepherds and describes them with imagery and a biblical allusion:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The shepherds appeared, dressed as in first times, in long flowing robes, the women carrying golden bundles of flax, the men staves. Under great trees on the shimmering desert the shepherds sat and convened, and the sheep moiled in the sun and raised dust beyond. "Man, man," I yelled to Dean, "wake up and see the shepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you can tell!"
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