The Once and Future King: Allusions 4 key examples

Wart is scared that Hob will be angry at losing Cully, because Hob has worked so hard to train the bird. To describe this, White alludes to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, in that Hob's work "had been like Jacob's struggle with the angel."

This refers to the story of Jacob, the patriarch of the Jewish people, wrestling with an unnamed angel in Genesis 32:22–32. During his journey back to Canaan, Jacob encountered an angel (elsewhere described, however, as both a "man" and "God") who began to wrestle him, and they fought all night, Jacob sustaining a wound to his thigh. From that day on, Jacob was named "Israel" (meaning either "he overcame God" or "God overcomes") and was known as blessed. The story has become an idiom in both the Christian and Jewish tradition. The story is used to refer to a struggle that becomes so all-consuming that it comes to define one's life.

White uses this allusion somewhat ironically. There is an intentional difference in tone between Jacob's existential battle with the angel and the country affairs of a serf training a hawk. But readers see, through the allusion, Hob's genuine passion and care for his charges. White also shows Wart's character, that he understands the depth of Wart's passion, even if others, like Kay, think it is all for the birds.

This is perhaps the most explicit use of Merlyn's backward aging for historical anachronism. White chooses to make this historical allusion very clear. Merlyn could have referenced a more general fascist dictator, but he chose to clarify that Merlyn is thinking of "an Austrian," singling out Hitler. (White's use of specificity also tells us that he finds Africa, much of Asia, and all of the Americas outside the U.S. to be "uncivilized.") It is rather a disruption to have such a specific injunction against Hitler in the text. But writers are indelibly influenced by their political situations, and White, writing in the 1950s, perhaps felt that it was important that he make his allegiances very clear.

It is worth noting that White's choice here makes a marked contrast to J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien and White are worth comparing, as both wrote a long saga influenced by English history and influenced by the present. But Tolkien, writing after World War I, made a very specific choice to remove allegory from his book entirely, routinely disproving theories proposed by readers of connections to current events. White, writing after World War II, makes a different choice and explicitly connects his novel to the present day. This emphasizes a general tone of anachronism in The Once and Future King and makes the work political, if rather obviously.

This scene continues, revealing that this outsider is Lancelot—he has returned from his quest thin, unshaven, and dirty. But within this episode, White includes an odd classical allusion, quoted above: "the same game as Nausicaa was playing when Ulysses arrived."

White is alluding to the Odyssey, an epic poem by the legendary bard Homer around 1200 BCE. Nausicaa, according to the Odyssey, was the daughter of Alcinous, king of Phaeacia, an island nation in the western Mediterranean. Ulysses (the hero of the Odyssey, sometimes translated as Odysseus) washes up unconscious at Phaeacia early in the poem, near a group of young girls on the shore, including Nausicaa. They had just started playing a "ball game," leading to much laughing, dancing, singing, and splashing. This eventually wakes Ulysses; Athena, his patron goddess, quickly places a disguise on him, and he meets Nausicaa, who greets him and, with hospitality for the stranger, directs him into the city.

What the specific ball game might be is unclear. (Artists depicting the scene in subsequent centuries typically painted something akin to a combination of tennis and dodgeball.) But White's allusion is still effective, even if it does not tell us much about what game the girl in the castle garden was playing. That girl was playing "the same game as Nausicaa was playing when Ulysses arrived"; what White means is that that girl in the castle was, like Nausicaa, trying to make fun in a stressful situation in which a strange man visits her home turf.

White is referring to Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies. In particular, he is referencing one of the most well-known moments in the play, in Act 3, Scene 4, when Hamlet kills Polonius, the advisor to King Claudius (Hamlet's uncle). Hamlet is having an argument with Gertrude (his mother); he is describing how he plans to kill Claudius. Polonius spies on the conversation from "behind an arras," according to the stage directions (an arras is a tapestry meant to conceal an alcove). Polonius begins to fear for his own life, and calls out for help from behind the arras. Hamlet assumes it is Claudius behind the curtain, and makes to kill him. Hamlet claims he hears a rat behind the curtain: "How now, a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead." The stage directions describe the demise: "He kills Polonius by thrusting a rapier through the arras."

White's allusion to Hamlet is notable for its specificity. Hamlet is one of the most widely quoted and referenced works in the English language. Yet White manages to make a reference to Hamlet that is fresh, because he makes it in such a granular way. The Gawaine family is trapped in a dark, curtained room like Hamlet was, fearing for their life. White could have made a more easy-to-understand allusion here, to one of the more famous references in Hamlet; he could've mentioned that Polonius was hiding in the Justice Room. But White used very specific and accurate allusions to Hamlet, word for word: referencing the "arras," "rats," and "rapier." This allusion very specifically connects the Gawaine family not just to Hamlet's story but also to the emotion of entrapment and fear that ultimately leads people to lash out.