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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—Children’s Stories:
When giving background on the way that the virtual reality nursery in the Happylife Home works, the narrator alludes to several children’s books, as seen in the following passage:
How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon—all the delightful contraptions of a make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling, or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing.
The narrator—channeling George Hadley—alludes to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (when describing opening the door to the nursery and finding “Wonderland, Alice, [and] the Mock Turtle”), followed by the “Aladdin” folktale from The Arabian Nights (which features a “magical lamp”), as well as L. Frank Baum’s book Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz (part of the series in which The Wizard of Oz appears), and Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle series. He also references the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” (that features a cow jumping over a moon) and the winged horse Pegasus from Greek mythology.
All of these allusions combine to paint a picture of Wendy and Peter as two typical children who enjoy the sorts of popular children’s stories that most kids do. This is significant because, as the story goes on, it becomes clear that Wendy and Peter have very much strayed from playing these sorts of comforting and playful scenes in their virtual reality nursery, instead settling on a hot and desolate scene of an African veldt, complete with a pair of vicious lions. This is when George (and his wife Lydia) get the first hints at the fact that this technology is harming their children’s normal development, bringing out the more violent side of their human instincts.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Rima in the Forest:
After confronting their children about the unsettling African veldt landscape that they found in the virtual reality nursery (and after the children claim that no such veldt exists), George and Lydia visit the nursery to see if their children are telling the truth. In this scene, Bradbury includes both imagery and an allusion, as seen in the following passage:
There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain, high voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees with colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in her long hair. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were gone. Only Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your eyes.
The imagery here engages different senses at once—the descriptions of the “green, lovely forest,” the “purple mountain,” and the “colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets” all help readers to visualize the scene, while the description of the “high voices singing” helps them to hear it. The note about how the song is one “so beautiful that it brought tears to your eyes” also engages readers emotionally.
All of these descriptions are meant to help readers understand how different this virtual reality scene is than the previous one with the desolate African veldt full of hungry lions—the children are clearly aware of the fact that they are doing something “wrong” in letting their violent impulses create the scenery in the nursery and are trying to cover it up with this “lovely” forest scene.
The allusion here is to W. H. Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest, which features a protagonist named Rima, a young girl who lives in the forest in South America. The Rima in this virtual reality scene is clearly a reference to the Rima of Hudson’s tale.
Related Themes:
