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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—A Brace of Mustaches:
In Chapter 1, Jack observes Willie's charisma at work as the Boss talks with his constituents in Mason City. Willie and his team visit the drugstore in town, and Willie strikes up conversation with the soda jerk. Jack doesn't know who he is, so he refers to him as "a tall, gaunt-shanked, malarial, leather-faced side of jerked venison, wearing jean pants and a brace of mustaches hanging off the kind of face you see in photographs of General Forrest's cavalrymen." Jack is making an allusion to General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general known for his expertise with cavalry (earning him the nickname "the Wizard of the Saddle").
Forrest is known for the Battle at Fort Pillow, where he and his cavalry massacred hundreds of Union soldiers who were trying to surrender, the majority of them Black, part of the U.S. Colored Corps. After the war, Forrest joined the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Grand Wizard. Jack, seeing the soda jerk's leathery appearance and country clothes, thinks that he looks like one of these cavalrymen; in other words, Jack thinks that the man looks like a racist, a rural conservative who might have fought with the Confederates some 60 years before. This is indicative of Jack's worldview. Raised in wealth and highly educated, Jack is generally disparaging toward, and often assumes the worst of, those of lower social and economic classes.
Willie, though, is different. For all his flaws, the Boss is an excellent politician and knows how to communicate with his constituents. He has a full conversation with the soda jerk, who he knows on a first-name basis, and despite their distinctly different dialects, they hold a friendly discussion:
"How you making it, Malaciah?"
The Adam's apple worked a couple of times, and the Boss shook the hand which was hanging out there in the air as if it didn't belong to anybody, and Old Leather-Face said, "We's grabblen."
"How's your boy?" the Boss asked.
"Ain't doen so good," Old Leather-Face allowed.
"Sick?"
"Naw," Old Leather-Face allowed, "jail."
"My God," the Boss said, "what they doing round here, putting good boys in jail?"
"He's a good boy," Old Leather-Face allowed. "Hit wuz a fahr fight, but he had a lettle bad luck."
Malaciah has a strongly inflected dialect, as recorded by Jack in his narration. For one thing, this helps to set the scene in Mason City, as Malaciah's accent shows that this area is especially rural and isolated. His dialect continues to emphasize the difference between him and the more well-to-do visitors to Mason City. But while Jack's narration continues to call Malaciah "Old Leather-Face," Willie shows his inherent goodwill toward his constituents and checks in on family members. Willie knows that this kind of on-the-ground knowledge of his constituency is crucial and that keeping tabs on important figures in Mason City is important to his campaign. (Note that "Malaciah" is a version of the biblical name "Malachi," which means "messenger.") Malaciah is certainly different from Jack and Willie in both his appearance and dialect. But Jack and Willie, as above, react differently to Malaciah, showing Jack's classism and misanthropy and Willie's charisma and fairness.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Gimme:
In Chapter 1, Willie visits Mason City and speaks to a gathered crowd. He puts on a guise of informality—"I'm not going to make any speech," he says, convincing no one in attendance—before setting out to describe how all politicians are corrupt. That is, of course, all politicians except for him. He quotes from the Bible to make his point:
"The Good Book says, 'There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, it is enough—'" and the voice was different now — "'the grave, and the barren womb, and the earth that is not filled with water, and the fire that saith not, it is enough.' But Solomon might have added just one little item. He might have just made his little list complete, and added, the politician who never stops saying, Gimme."
Here the Boss quotes perfectly from the King James Version of the Bible, specifically Proverbs 30:15–16. This chapter of Proverbs describes greed and how it is destructive to everyone. But Willie says that Solomon, the traditional author of the Book of Proverbs, should have added "just one little item": politicians, too, are as greedy as fire.
Note also that Willie's "one little item" is also a subtle joke. "The politician who never stops saying, Gimme" is a reference to the earlier part of Proverbs 30:15, just before the portion Willie quotes, which describes a leech and his two daughters who always say "Give me, give me." Willie thus calls politicians leeches, always asking for more.
Willie's biblical allusion serves many purposes in the story. For one, Jack, as he describes often, is a thoughtful atheist, so Willie's ease and precision in quoting the Bible serves to contrast the protagonist with the narrator. But Willie, while not an atheist like Jack, never shows himself to be an especially faithful man in his daily life. So this passage also shows how easily Willie manipulates his own identity to convince people. In rural, conservative, heavily Christian Mason City, Willie sets out to make fun of politicians using the Bible, perfectly suiting his rhetoric to his audience.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Repent Ye:
In Chapter 5, Jack goes to Baton Rouge to see the Scholarly Attorney, the man who he thinks to be his father. Jack knows that the Scholarly Attorney frequents a certain bodega in a Latino neighborhood, so Jack goes there to wait for him. He asks for a beer and notices a line from the Bible on the wall:
While I drank the beer I looked up above the counter and saw another one of the signs, painted on a big slab of plywood, or something of the sort, hanging from a nail. The background of the sign was bright red, there were blue scrolls of flowers in relief in the upper corners, the lettering was in black, high-lighted in white. It said: Repent ye; for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Matt., iii, 2.
This biblical allusion is one of very few in the book, which is usually atheistic, but it is still complex and ironic. As the sign says, the line is the famous statement from Matthew 3:2, in which John the Baptist foretells the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who will inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven. Later in that chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, John baptizes Jesus and describes how Jesus is the savior of the world.
This allusion allows Jack to distinguish the Latin neighborhoods of Louisiana from the White ones by their religious fervor. The allusion is also meant as an ironic joke. John the Baptist, in the Gospel of Matthew, foretells in this line of the coming of a Savior. In this moment of Jack's story, though, the person who is "at hand," about to arrive, is the Scholarly Attorney, nearly insane and totally disheveled, far from a messiah.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Me Inside Blubber:
Jack recollects his past love with Anne in a long flashback in Chapter 7. He recounts this history in order to more fully understand his prior relationship to Anne after he found out that she had begun an affair with Willie. In this recollection, he describes a night in his roadster, driving around on a summer night:
She had rolled her head on the leather seat back, and touched her finger to her lips to say "Sh, sh," and smiled. And had sunk her harpoon deeper than ever Queequeg sunk it, through four feet of blubber to the very quick, but I hadn't really known it until the line played out and the barb jerked in the red meat which was the Me inside all the blubber of what I had thought I was. And might continue to think I was.
Anne, with all her easy beauty, makes one small gesture to Jack, and that is enough to draw him in entirely. He describes this feeling of total infatuation through a strange and beautiful allusion to Moby-Dick—most unusually, Jack compares himself not to a hunter, but to a whale.
Jack is referencing Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's 1851 novel of an endlessly persistent sailor, Captain Ahab, and his hunt for a seemingly invincible whale, Moby Dick. Queequeg is a Polynesian harpooner who hunts the whale with Ahab on his ship, the Pequod. Queequeg never actually harpoons Moby Dick but does successfully snag other whales and sea creatures in the novel. Jack, in gruesome physical detail, imagines that Anne's flirtatious expression was like a harpoon cutting through layers of fat. Here, those layers of fat represent Jack's inaccurate conception of himself, which Anne's expression cuts through, to Jack's real self. In the extended flashback in Chapter 7, Jack comes to realize that Anne, and his love for her, is at the center of his life story. This allusion to Melville characterizes that realization exactly.
The reference to Queequeg and Moby-Dick comes somewhat out of left field in a book that does not use allusion often. Jack is certainly well educated and would have been familiar with this novel. But part of the power of this allusion is its surprise: the immediate transition from the roadster at night to a harpooned whale is striking and convincing.
Related Themes:
