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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
Allusions
Explanation and Analysis—FAO Schwarz:
While many elements of “The Lesson” are fictional, FAO Schwarz is not—it is a real store in Midtown Manhattan that has been there since 1870. Bambara’s decision to allude to the store in “The Lesson”—by having Miss Moore take Sylvia and her peers there as part of a field trip about wealth inequality—is intentional. She likely assumed that readers would be aware of the store’s reputation as one of the fanciest and most expensive toy stores in the country.
The following passage—which comes as the children are exploring inside the store—captures the prohibitively expensive nature of FAO Schwarz’s products:
“This here costs four hundred eighty dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. So we pile up all over her to see what she pointin out. My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy, and different-color inks dripped into the splits, then the whole thing put into a oven or something. But for $480 it don’t make sense.
Here Sylvia and her friends “pile up” in front of a paperweight that costs $480. It is significant that Sylvia doesn’t even know that what she’s looking at is a paperweight (calling it “a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy”), as paperweights are typically found in wealthy or upper-class homes. As she notes, an item like this costing $480 “don’t make sense” to her—as a young Black girl growing up in poverty in Harlem, she has only ever witnessed her parents purchasing practical and inexpensive items. Ultimately, by including FAO Schwarz in the story, Bambara is able to communicate important takeaways about the reality of the racial wealth divide.
Related Themes:
