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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
Book 1, Chapter 1: Amory, Son of Beatrice
Explanation and Analysis—Monsignor's Robes:
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Amory meets Monsignor Darcy for the first time. The two hit it off immediately, and Fitzgerald makes a clever allusion to describe Monsignor's appearance and cement is appeal to the young Amory.
Monsignor was forty-four then, and bustling—a trifle too stout for symmetry, with hair the color of spun gold and a brilliant, enveloping personality. When he came into a room clad in his full purple regalia from thatch to toe, he resembled a Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention.
In order to illuminate Monsignor Darcy for the reader, Fitzgerald makes an allusion that compares Monsignor's outfit to the legendary paintings of the 19th century English painter, J. M. W. Turner, who frequently depicted sunsets as overwhelming washes of color. Through this invocation of visual art, Fitzgerald tethers Darcy's description to clear visual imagery while also emphasizing the priest's over-the-top, patrician tastes in art and literature. As he does throughout the novel, Fitzgerald's language adopts elitist references of its own in order to keep pace with the characters at hand and to satirize their extreme wealth and pseudo-sophistication.
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Book 1, Chapter 2: Spires and Gargoyles
Explanation and Analysis—The Great Dreaming Spires:
In Book 1, Chapter 2, Amory settles into his new life as a Princeton student. Throughout This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald leans heavily on a variety of literary devices to describe the university and the psychological effect that its prestige and grandeur have on Amory. In this case, Fitzgerald uses an allusion to equate Amory's conception of Princeton's architecture with that of Oxford:
Princeton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness—West and Reunion, redolent of the Sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and arrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not quite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with clear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Cleveland towers.
The ethereal description of Princeton's gothic buildings as "dreaming spires" is a direct allusion to the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold and his poem, "Thyrsis," in which he describes the city and university of Oxford as "that sweet city with her dreaming spires."
Amory's love affair with his school is in no small part because of Princeton's associations with the wealth, class, and influence that he so covets—though, throughout the novel, he also expresses the wish that he ended up crossing the Atlantic for Oxford. In this passage, Fitzgerald links the two schools and their shared association with intellectual and political elitism, at once illustrating Amory's sense of grandiosity about his new home and the ease with which he couches his egotism in the erudite literary references of the upper class—a trait that will serve him well as he climbs the ranks of Princeton's social scene.
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Book 1, Chapter 3: The Egotist Considers
Explanation and Analysis—The Art of Dying:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Stephen Blaine—Amory's father—passes away. Amory's reaction to his death and behavior at his funeral reflects his emotional detachment from his family and his extreme self-involvement. Fitzgerald demonstrates Amory's startling attitude towards the proceedings with an allusion:
The day after the ceremony he was amusing himself in the great library by sinking back on a couch in graceful mortuary attitudes, trying to determine whether he would, when his day came, be found with his arms crossed piously over his chest (Monsignor Darcy had once advocated this posture as being the most distinguished), or with his hands clasped behind his head, a more pagan and Byronic attitude.
This passage is a sobering reminder of the existential extent of Amory's self-absorption. After his father has been interred, Amory reflects not on his father's passing but on the desirable—which is to say, classy—ways to pose in death, wondering how best to impart the proper sense of status. To cement the crudeness of his musings, which Amory punctuates as always with erudite thoughts about art and literature, Fitzgerald includes an allusion to Lord Byron and his poetry, which was famous for its exploration of pagan themes. This, in turn, stands in contrast to Monsignor's Darcy's preference for a stereotypically Catholic way of arranging a dead body. Even to himself, then, and even in a moment that would otherwise be one of personal tragedy, Amory is obsessed with embodying a sense of class and worldly detachment.
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Book 2, Chapter 2: Experiments in Convalescence
Explanation and Analysis—Lowered Expectations:
In Book 2, Chapter 2, Amory and Tom struggle to make sense of the world in the aftermath of World War One. As he struggles to explain his sense of meaninglessness, Amory makes an allusion to great figures in history:
Oh, Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might be a really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader—and now even Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn't be a real old-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The world is so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planning to be such an important finger—
In the aftermath of World War I, the many members of the Jazz Age struggled to piece together an entirely new sense of their world: it seemed impossibly vast, impersonal, and indifferent to the beauty and value of individual human life. To cement Amory's realization of what he feels to be a horrible truth, Fitzgerald invokes two great figures from Western civilization: the artist and intellectual Leonardo da Vinci, as well as the statesman and absurdly wealthy banker Lorenzo de Medici. In Amory's past life, symbolized by his time at Princeton, he would have idolized these two men for their incredible access to "meaning" through knowledge a`nd money—the tools of the ruling class. Now, however, his indifference even to these two men and his assertion that they wouldn't have been able to make anything of the world in the aftermath of the Great War cements just how far he has come and how much he has changed over the course of the war.
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