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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
Explanation and Analysis—A Chasm:
When Cass and Richard depart the bar where they have been sitting with a group, they unknowingly leave Rufus, Jane, and Vivaldo in a tense situation. Baldwin uses an allusion referencing a line from Jailhouse Hopkins’s “Lightnin’ Blues” and a simile to illustrate this:
Everyone was gone except Jane and Rufus and Vivaldo.
I wouldn’t mind being in jail but I’ve got to stay there so long.…The seats the others had occupied were like a chasm now between Rufus and the white boy and the white girl.
The line of song that the author includes here appears in italics and without context, as though it’s drifting through the silence between Rufus, Vivaldo, and Jane. It’s initially uncertain whether it’s in Rufus’s mind or whether everyone present is hearing it, but it becomes clear later that he’s imagining it. It recurs a few times in the first two chapters of the novel, and the allusion is always connected to the idea of Rufus being trapped in a situation with no clear way out. Sitting in this bar with a White couple, Rufus suddenly feels distinctly out of place but unable to leave politely.
The simile that follows compares the empty seats Cass and Richard have left to a “chasm,” which highlights the distance between Rufus, Jane, and Vivaldo. The emptiness of the seats is a visual manifestation of the distance between Rufus “and the white boy and the white girl." It's a small "chasm," but a chasm nonetheless.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Horizontal Collaborator:
As Yves shares his family history with Eric, he tells a secret about his mother and makes a historical allusion referencing “horizontal collaboration”:
She told all kinds of lies about her work in the Resistance. Quelle horreur! that whole time, it was not very pretty. Many women had their heads shaved, sometimes for nothing, you know? just because they were pretty or someone was jealous or they had refused to sleep with someone. But not my mother. Nous, nous étions tranquille avec nôtre petit officier and our beefsteak and our chocolate candy.
French women who cooperated with occupying Nazi forces experienced painful public scrutiny and persecution after the Nazi occupation was over. The French called these women “horizontal collaborators" —a pejorative term referring to having sex with enemy soldiers—in the aftermath of World War II. Yves describes his mother’s involvement with a German officer glibly, explaining to Eric that the reason she chose to “collaborate” was to maintain the peace and safety of their family life. When he mentions “beefsteak" and "chocolate candy” he’s comparing the ease of their life with a Nazi officer versus the poverty and struggle they would have risked otherwise.
Yves also remembers that his mother tried to hide her cooperation by claiming she was deeply involved with fighting for the French Resistance. She knew that the truth would have spelled disaster, as she saw other women like her being singled out and suffering violence when their community turned against them. Yves observes that not all victims of public punishment were truly guilty, as people used the accusation of sleeping with Nazis to discredit women they had private grievances with.
Related Themes:
