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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
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Dante's Dark Wood:
This quotation appears at the very start of the novel and alludes to the opening lines of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Inferno, where the poet’s narrator takes a long journey through hell. Through the allusion in this epigraph, Guterson foreshadows the novel’s preoccupations with self-knowledge and with prejudice:
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!
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Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—The Right Thing to Do:
This description of people being loaded into ships appears during a flashback that recounts the forced removal of Japanese American residents from San Piedro Island during World War II. Guterson alludes to the mass internment of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Early on the morning of March 29, 1942, fifteen transports of the U.S. War Relocation Authority took all of San Piedro’s Japanese-Americans to the ferry terminal in Amity Harbor. They were loaded onto a ship while their white neighbors looked on, people who had risen early to stand in the cold and watch this exorcising of the Japanese from their midst […]The fishermen felt, like most islanders, that this exiling of the Japanese was the right thing to do, and leaned against the cabins of their stern-pickers and bow-pickers with the conviction that the Japanese must go for reasons that made sense: there was a war on and that changed everything.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Lease-To-Own:
This testimony takes place during Kabuo’s trial, as Etta Heine describes the land deal she and her husband made years before. Guterson uses foreshadowing and allusion in this courtroom scene to outline the original lease agreement between the Miyamotos and Carl Heine and to hint at the legal and racial tensions that later shape Kabuo's trial:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The arrangement, she explained at the behest of Alvin Hooks when the court had been called into session again, included a five-hundred-dollar down payment and an eight-year “lease-to-own” contract. Carl to collect two hundred and fifty dollars every six months, June 30 and December 31, with six and a half percent interest figured annually. Papers to be held by Carl, another set by Zenhichi, a third set for any inspector wanted to see them. The Miyamotos—this was back in ’34, said Etta—couldn’t really own land anyway. They were from Japan, both of them born there, and there was this law on the books prevented them.
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