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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 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Lilies of the Field:
In Book 1, Nathan Price alludes to the Bible in order to chastise his family for trying to bring too much luggage on the airplane.
Father surveyed our despair as if he’d expected it all along, and left it up to wife and daughters to sort out, suggesting only that we consider the lilies of the field, which have no need of a hand mirror or aspirin tablets. “I reckon the lilies need Bibles, though, and his darn old latrine spade,” Rachel muttered, as her beloved toiletry items got pitched out of the suitcase one by one. Rachel never does grasp scripture all that well.
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Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—They're Different from Us:
In Book 1, Ruth May tries to explain her childish understanding of the religious justification for segregation. She does so by alluding to the myth of Ham from the Bible. While she gets some aspects of the segregationist reasoning correct, her childlike dialect and misunderstandings create a sad irony: even children who don't understand what they're saying can perpetrate racism.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Back home in Georgia they have their own school so they won’t be a-strutting into Rachel’s and Leah and Adah’s school. Leah and Adah are the gifted children, but they still have to go to the same school as everybody. But not the colored children. The man in church said they’re different from us and needs ought to keep to their own. Jimmy Crow says that, and he makes the laws. They don’t come in the White Castle restaurant where Mama takes us to get Cokes either, or the Zoo. Their day for the Zoo is Thursday. That’s in the Bible.
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Book 1, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Here Comes Moses:
In Book 1, Rachel describes the prayer Nathan gives when the Prices are being welcomed to Kilanga. She compares Nathan to Moses, alluding to an important biblical figure. While Nathan would probably find this comparison flattering, Rachel means it derogatorily and accompanies it with an unflattering simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then he began to speak. It was not so much a speech as a rising storm. “The Lord rideth,” he said, low and threatening, “upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt.” Hurray! they all cheered, but I felt a knot in my stomach. He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life. “Into Egypt,” he shouted in his rising singsong preaching voice that goes high and low, then higher and lower, back and forth like a saw ripping into a tree trunk, “and every corner of the earth where His light,” Father paused, glaring all about him, “where His light has yet to fall!”
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Book 1, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Platter:
In Book 1, Adah describes the left-behind broken furniture and décor in their Kilanga house. The last item she describes, with evocative imagery and a religious simile, is a beautiful platter:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And in the midst of this rabble, serene as the Virgin Mother in her barnful of shepherds and scabby livestock, one amazing, beautiful thing: a large, oval white platter painted with delicate blue forget-me-nots, bone china, so fine that sunlight passes through it. Its origin is unfathomable. If we forgot ourselves we might worship it.
Book 2, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Ruth May's Mongoose:
In one of the lighter moments of the novel, Ruth May describes her pet mongoose. Her childish Southern dialect, allusion to a children's book, and personification of her strange pet all illustrate her innocence:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Nobody ever even gave me the mongoose. It came to the yard and looked at me. Every day it got closer and closer. One day the mongoose came in the house and then every day after that. It likes me the best. It won’t tolerate anybody else. Leah said we had to name it Ricky Ticky Tabby but no sir, it’s mine and I’m a-calling it Stuart Little. That is a mouse in a book. I don’t have a snake because a mongoose wants to kill a snake. Stuart Little killed the one by the kitchen house and that was a good business, so now Mama lets it come on in the house.
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Book 2, Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Diamonds:
In Book 2, the Prices get to know the schoolteacher Anatole better when he comes to their home for dinner. Rachel is perplexed when Anatole says he "spent some time at the diamond mines down south in Katanga," and her confusion is an example of situational irony. With allusions and her Southern dialect, she describes how Anatole has presented an entirely different idea of diamonds than the one she's used to:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When he spoke of diamonds I naturally thought of Marilyn Monroe in her long gloves and pursey lips whispering “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” My best friend Dee Dee Baker and I have snuck off to see M.M. and Brigitte Bardot both at the matinee (Father would flatout kill me if he knew), so you see I know a thing or two about diamonds. But when I looked at Anatole’s wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms, I pictured hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt and got to thinking, Gee, does Marilyn Monroe even know where they come from? Just picturing her in her satin gown and a Congolese diamond digger in the same universe gave me the weebie jeebies.
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Book 3, Chapter 34
Explanation and Analysis—Root and Graft:
In Book 3, Brother Fowles returns to Kilanga with his wife for a short visit. He meets the Prices, and it doesn't take long for Nathan and Fowles to get into a spirited disagreement about Christianity, replete with biblical quotes, allusions, and interpretations. In order to challenge Nathan's condescending attitude toward the Congolese villagers, Fowles takes up a metaphor from the Bible and expands it:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Take for example your Romans, chapter ten. Let’s go back to that. The American Translation, if you prefer. A little farther on we find this promise: ‘If the first handful of dough is consecrated, the whole mass is, and if the root of a tree is consecrated, so are its branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you who were only a wild olive shoot have been grafted in, and made to share the richness of the olive’s root, you must not look down upon the branches. Remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.' […] Do you get the notion we are the branch that’s grafted on here, sharing in the richness of these African roots?
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