ALLUSION
DEFINITION:
• An ALLUSION is a reference to a famous person,
historical moment, literary text, or pop culture
event/person/thing. In a broad sense—it is a
reference to something that is (or should be)
culturally known.
• ALLUSIONS are used in literature all the time to help
make cultural connections to the reader as well as
to ‘say a lot’ with fewer words.
PURPOSE?
• Allusions Culturally Connect Us!
• If we do not understand an allusion we cannot
understand the author.
TYPES OF ALLUSIONS
• Mythology: Achilles‘ Heel, Cupid, Pandora’s Box
• Biblical: Cain and Abel, Good Samaritan, Forbidden
Fruit
• Literature: Scrooge, Jekyll and Hyde, Romeo
• Historical: Benedict Arnold, Utopia, Nazi
EXAMPLES: WHAT IS BEING SAID
THROUGH THESE ALLUSIONS?
THEY WANT EFX
• Focus Question: What allusions must you recognize in
order to understand the song?
• CIRCLE OR BOX any allusions you recognize.
• Then, with a partner, choose 5 allusions to IDENTIFY and
EXPLAIN.
• Analysis Question: What is Das Efx’s (the rapper)
purpose?
• Why did he choose these specific allusions? What is
trying to say though these allusions?
ALLUSIONS IN HAROUN
• "Sea of the Rivers of Story" is the English equivalent of
Kathāsaritsāgara, the title of an 11th-century collection of
Indian legends.
• Another reference is to the stories of One Thousand and One
Nights, a collection of West and South Asian stories and folk
tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. In
English these stories are known as the Arabian Nights
• Haroun, the son of Rashid Khalifa refers to Harun al-Rashid, a caliph
(Islamic political and religious leader) who ruled from 786 to 809 and
who appears frequently in One Thousand and One Nights stories.
• The Walrus plays off of The Beatles song, "I am the Walrus".
• “I am the egg man, they are the egg men/I am the walrus”
• Haroun encounters a warrior who is fighting his own shadow.
This is possible a reference to J.M Barrie's Peter Pan.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
• The Walrus
• The Pages as compared to the
Queen and her Court (cards)
• both are extended metaphors used in
similar ways
• Time, especially time stopped
• (The Mad Tea Party and the word-play
involving time).
•
• The Language of wordplay, puns,
and seeming nonsense.
THE TWILIGHT STRIP AND THE
TWILIGHT ZONE
• According to the video, what is The Twilight Zone?
• What is Rushdie saying about The Twilight Strip through
this allusion?
• What can we as readers better understand about it
now that we recognize the allusion?
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
• Why might Salman Rushdie have chosen to include so
many allusions in Haroun and the Sea of Stories?
• How might the use of allusion in Haroun and the Sea of
Stories and They Want Efx connect to Kattam-Shud’s
statement that “inside every single story, inside every
Stream in the Ocean, there lies a world, a story-world,
that I cannot Rule at all”?
• AND, as a bonus, how might recognizing allusions and their
meaning help us to answer the question of “What’s the point of
stories that aren’t even true?”