#but I often see people shipping me (mad hatter) with Alice

[princesssarisa]

The Mad Hatter for the character ask

These answers are all about the character from the original book and its traditional adaptations – not about Tarrant Hightopp from the Tim Burton films.

Favorite thing about them: What a funny, memorably insane character he is, whose kooky logic and literal-minded remarks include so much clever wordplay and use of double meanings. This combined with his unique appearance in his oversized top hat and bowtie (courtesy of John Tenniel, never strayed from since) makes it only natural that he's the most iconic and beloved Wonderland character next to Alice herself.

Ironically, he wasn't even in the original story that Lewis Carroll told to the Liddell girls on their famous rowboat outing, or in the book's original manuscript: the Mad Tea-Party was a later addition when Carroll expanded the book for publication. But once the Hatter came into being, he understandably stole the show.

Least favorite thing about them: How rude he is to Alice, and the way he and the March Hare both casually abuse the Dormouse. It's no surprise that adaptations often tone these things down.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I can be literal-minded.

*I enjoy tea parties.

*I usually look good in hats.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I don't have any talking animal friends.

*I don't have a watch that tells me what day of the month it is.

*I'm not mad.

Favorite line:

From the book:

His famous riddle:

"Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

When Alice says that "I mean what I say" is the same thing as "I say what I mean":

"Not the same thing a bit! You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same as 'I eat what I see'!"

When Alice says she can't take "more" tea because she's had none yet:

"You mean you can't take less. It's very easy to take more than nothing."

And his long speech about Time and why "he" never does what the Hatter wants anymore.

From the Disney version:

"Mustard?! Don't let's be silly!"

brOTP: The March Hare, for sure, and possibly the Dormouse too.

OTP: None in the book, but in some adaptations, the March Hare.

nOTP: Alice or the Dormouse.

Random headcanon: Even if Time were to release him from his perpetual six o'clock, he would still have endless tea parties with the March Hare and the Dormouse. He likes it.

Unpopular opinion: I don't see him as a potential love interest for Alice whatsoever. Nothing against people who ship them, but I just don't get it.

Song I associate with them:

"The Unbirthday Song" from the Disney version.

"The Pun Song" from the 1972 film.

"Laugh" from the 1985 TV version.

Favorite picture of them:

The classic illustration by John Tenniel:

This illustration by Robert Ingpen:

This creepy illustration by Angel Dominguez:

Disney's animated Hatter:

Edward Everett Horton in the 1933 Paramount film:

Sir Robert Helpmann in the 1972 British film:

Anthony Newley in the 1985 TV version:

Martin Short in the 1999 TV version:

John Hoffman in the '90s Disney Channel series Adventures in Wonderland. A very fun, different spin on the character: a wacky inventor and jack-of-all-trades, who shares an especially cute friendship (and possibly more than friendship – both actors are gay and it shows) with his March Hare.

[mirrormazeworld]

will you be sad if your theories will turn out to be wrong or at least very different in the end? after all most theories dont come true because Yana Toboso has her own vision and all that. after all TWST has to work with a lot of constraints in terms of story. will you also consider writing a fanfic with your own version of some events if your theories will turn out wrong? it would be a shame to have all that incredible work go to waste

Hello anon! I will assume that you've read some of my theories so thank you for reading!

Will I be sad if my theories will turn out to be wrong? Good question.

In the very beginning, it was not my intention to become a twst theorist. I simply just dump everything inside of my head here as a concept for a world building of my yumeship. It is obvious I ship my Yuu with Crowley from my header which is already out of the question since most people will ship Yuu with the students. This alone is already different from the main story in my eyes.

All of those theories you've seen so far, it was actually just from Yana's statement in an interview that "Twisted Wonderland is inspired from Through the Looking Glass, and Lewis Carroll's way of writing has taught me(Yana) a lesson". In many modern version of Alice in Wonderland, Alice is often be shipped with Mad Hatter in a way. This is the base story of my yumeship, Ayumu(Yuu) as Alice x Crowley as Mad Hatter in a Wonderland (Twisted Wonderland). However, this rise a problem since we have little to no information of Crowley. And this is the main reason why I did a lot of research in Lewis Carroll's work because I want to base my yumeship lore on it, without knowing that it might really reveal some of the bigger mystery of Twisted Wonderland if it really proves to be true, because me and Yana based our story from the same source.

And as you said anon, it is inevitable to have my theories proved to be different from the game itself but it isn't all that surprising because although we did our story based on the same source, our main focus are different. Yana is more focused on the Disney villains with many Disney facts and Carroll's Wonderland as its framework. Mine is only focused on Crowley with Carroll's Wonderland as the story's framework but is backed up with scientific and mathematical facts more than Disney facts (although I might put some inside of it as well if I see it fits). And this is why in my hc Crowley can be "someone who doesn't have age and origin" rather than "his age and hometown is unknown" because this too actually can be explained scientificaly by theoretical physics and quantum physics, which also makes shipping Ayumu (Yuu) who is already an adult (19) in this case with Crowley becomes even more legal because Crowley here doesn't have age so I wish people would stop assuming me that I am somewhat a proship because I'm not.

Wonderland itself is a world with different logic than Alice's own world, and Twisted Wonderland is a world with twisted history that's been manipulated while being told for generations (Lilia's dialogue in chapter 6) so the main purpose of why those theories are there isn't to prove something is right or wrong, but rather so that people can understand what is the context behind the story before jumping to conclusion.

Yana said in the newest interview for twst in the app store that "you must be able to accept people think things differently from you, that is message we developed in this game"

Alice in Wonderland is a story about a girl falls into a pre-Einstein math version of wormhole so I don't see why I can't do the same thing with my own story, right? 👀

....though as for now I feel a bit reluctant to share about my yumeship lore because I'm actually not good in writing something and I'm still self conscious that people will see me as crazy ahaha

[scarlet-nygma]

I was talking yesterday with my friends about Gotham’s Rogues Gallery and we ended up with this...

All the rogues have social media accounts but they are mostly active on Twitter (except for Selina and Harley who are more of Instagram people)

And the rogues have long threads arguing with each other about who had most of Batman’s attention in the last Arkham breakout. The arguments are mostly between Riddler and Joker.

They also shamelessly talk about how hot Batman was when beating them up once they aren’t mad, it was the Joker who started this and seeing how tense Batman was in their last encounter meaning he saw it, everyone else joined in.

Tim hacked Ra’s Al Ghul’s account and tweets praises to the bat, detective this detective that calling him his son in law. Much to Tim’s horror, once he was forced to stop by Bruce, the tweets didn’t stop. Ra’s content was very popular and got him so much attention so why stop now? 

Selina and Harley have Instagram accounts for their pets.

There are accounts on social media that no one knows who is running (Barbara) that make posts every month like “Villain of the month” , “Top 10 heists of the month” , “Pet of the month” , “Top 10 rogues costumes of the month”

Riddler has a riddles page, and Scarecrow got an instagram account where he posts Autumn aesthetic and occasionally pics of the dork squad.

And we somehow jumped to this topic:

Every rogue in Gotham has a fanclub.

Riddler is close to his fans because he loves the attention and they are all really smart he is proud.

Scarecrow’s club is just a bunch of his former students, Becky is the one keeping them in check.

Mad Hatter’s club is a mix of weirdos and Alice in the Wonderland fans, their club activities include making lists of names of blonde women named Alice and they send it to Jervis. Most of the names on the list are of people they have issues with who happened to fit the description.

The leaders of all three clubs argue about who is better often, so once they purposely ran into the dork squad to ask them about this. To their surprise the three respected each other and were good friends (lovers if you ship them cuz me and my friends do).

Later that night Riddler emailed his club’s leader telling them that he is the better one among the three obviously. This is how he became close to his fans.

Also the rogues have an annual RoguesCon, most of them attend it out of costume just to have fun without being recognized. and others like Harley Quinn and Riddler always attend in costume because they love the attention.

[azuresins]

I’m honestly and sincerely not trying to stir anything up, I’m just tired and speaking aloud. I’ve just seen a lot of the same discourse pop up over and over, both on twitter and tumblr.  But this whole idea that “Aging up minors is bad” thing... There are artists like sh*dman that literally take the same character design, almost tracing the design of the child, and slap tits and ass on the child, and say, “they’re over 18 now, what the fuck are you gonna to about it!!!” This guy also reimagines real children, not characters as adults and says “they’re just INSPIRED by them they’re my OC this is freedom of speech!” And call it good.  And there are authors that made 0 attempt to rewrite minors, any differently from how they act and behave -- no apparent emotional growth, no mental growth, no real substantial changes, never thinking of events that might be current in canon as events-of-long-past; and just say ‘they’re over 18 now!’ and call it good.  Those depictions, personally, make me extremely uncomfortable. I stay the fuck away from it. I get why it makes other people extremely uncomfortable, and would rather not see it, and why it would make people really angry. Want to do something.  However I don’t think it’s fair, to lump those people, into the same category as artists who reimagine characters as adults, and put in the actual effort to accomplish that in a much more realistic, and tasteful way.  Or to the authors who write fiction of a character as an adult, going through growth, and experiencing changes; who put in the literary effort to give them that growth. It’s actually a very difficult thing to do, which is why in a lot of media even if a series has been on-going for 10+ years with 200+ episodes/chapters they keep the characters frozen in time. It’s difficult.  It’s as though it’s only okay, when the original creator of the canon, decides to intact the passage of time within the series and write their own characters as adults and age. An expressed permission, of sorts. When they start off a series with the character as a minor, and by the end of the series, they are an adult married with children-- only then is it okay to write the fiction and draw the character. Often times when a fanfic author/artist tries this beforehand, without knowing the creators intentions; they end up with drastically different results. By that point, they’re so different from the character originally depicted in canon, they’re pretty much a Fanon OC.  I suppose I’ve just read a lot of the arguments and the people who jump down others throats... and I’m just failing to see the correlation between these two types of fan creators.  A huge part of adulthood, is forming your sexuality; or lack thereof. I’m not saying that all fan authors do the best job of aging characters up; But there are a lot that are perfectly capable writers, and can do this in a tasteful way. SOMETIMES even better than the author of the OW. And I think the whole idea behind it is to make sure that no one would read or look at their work and think “ped*phile!!” Why is this such a forbidden thing to write?  When I was much younger, and before JK outed her ugly ass as a Terf, I loved to read fanfictions of Harry x Draco and Ron x Hermione respectively, and all the fanfictions I read, imagined both Harry and Draco, and Ron and Hermione as adults, getting married, adopting children/having children and imagined what they’d be like in adulthood.  One of those fic authors imagined adult!Harry as an Auror; before we even had a good grasp of what that really was, with longer black hair; and a son named James. Not a far cry from how Adult!Harry actually ended up in Canon.  And another Author imagined that by the end of it all Harry would have a missing leg; but I still really enjoyed both depictions of Adult!Harry. Because he was an adult.  I was also very obsessed by the concept of Alice in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland being shipped with the Mad Hatter. I thought it was really, really cool what he did; Alice returning to Wonderland as an Adult woman having not remembered that she had been there before; she’s so different, that even most of the characters are uncertain if she’s even the right person.  I guess I’m just sitting there, looking at people who say “be critical of everything!” but I’m wondering if they really ... know what that means or realize they’re falling for censorship tactics.   Maybe people should critically review individual works that minors aren’t even supposed to see/read to begin with, before declaring it’s harmful or doing something that it isn’t; is all that people are suggesting, but it’s always met with such cult-like impulsive hostility... that nothing ever changes. Meanwhile the actual pedophiles on other websites; websites actually that DO say “Hey we DO NOT ALLOW THAT uwuwuwuwuww we are safe!” and are so...unregulated, that problematic horrible content is *everywhere* [rule34] just get to keep posting away..... going uncalled out.... never get any consequences, never get doxxed, never get harassed...  Is it also a proximity thing? People just “call out” and harass the people they feel like they can actually have a chance of reaching? I dunno.  It’s such a black-and-white thing that I’m at the point where I don’t really know “my place” in most fandoms, anymore. I’m not “enough” of a shipper to be okay with everything and a ‘ALMOST an Anti, a snob and HATER’. But I’m okay things, that apparently make me as bad as people going to jail for physically harming children. I dunno, man. The climate on the internet is truly wild. I fear for this tiktok generation so badly. 

[takaraphoenix]

Hi! What are your thoughts about OUAT.

That’s a complex, layered answer because my feelings for OUaT are very complex. The short of it is that, obsession and love level wise, this was my Shadowhunters before Shadowhunters existed as a show. I completely loved and adored this show, I watched every episode as soon as it came out, with a single-minded focus (as in: normally, when watching TV, I use the show as a background noise to my writing. There is only a select handful of TV shows that ever managed to get my full, undivided attention of me turning all else off to only focus on the show).

I love OUaT to bits and pieces. However, much like Shadowhunters, it was far from a flawless show. Very, very, very far. Seriously, it’s an absolute mess in many aspects but damn do I love it.

It appeals to many of the things I love. For one, classic Disney movies. For another, fairy tales - but the very specific niche genre of fairy tale crossovers, which is just... my biggest weakness, possibly. Thirdly, characters you can get invested in and love to bits and pieces.And fourth, shipping.

This is one of the incredibly small, tiny pool of shows where I absolutely adore the canon ships, not just in a “daw it’s cute enough” way that makes me accept that it is The Canon Ship That’s Happening, but in a way that has me actively invested in and rooting for those absolute dumbasses. And. Not just one ship, usually it’s like “huh I am surprisingly invested in this one ship”, but - Rumpel/Belle, Hook/Emma, David/Snow?? Yes, please, inject it into my veins.

Though also just as attached to my non-canon ships - REGINA/EMMA FOR LIFE, Ruby/Snow, Hook/David. And that duality of being really invested in the non-canon ships but still absolutely loving the canon ships? That is... completely and entirely unique to OUaT for me. Never happened outside this show.

I adore that this show did one of the things that I complained Descendants didn’t - it respects Snow White, the very first Disney princess, and puts her front and center. Never-ever made sense to me that Descendants just went “uuuh we at random picked Belle to rule all the kingdoms because I dunno the head writer loves Beauty and the Beast the most”... Snow White was Disney’s very first and I do think she deserves more respect.

The things they did with her! They made her an actual active heroine. Not a little girl hiding out in the woods. They explored possibilities and turned her into a total badass, who never lost the main qualities of Disney’s Snow White though. Her nurturing, loving, gentle soul. That is what I adore about her, because very often when trying to portray strong female characters, media removes their softness, makes them hardened to make them a badass.

Regina and Emma have such a brilliant canon dynamic - even beyond the fanon ship. The way they mended and grew together and became friends. The growth, the softness, the shared custody. I love them.

And with both Regina and Rumpel, I love the day they gradually progressed from “main antagonist from season 1″ to “part of the family”. This show is a found family feast.

It wasn’t flawless. It had some pacing issues, in my opinion. Like the Peter Pan arc was too long. They went hiking for like 12 episodes. That one still sticks with me as having bored me. And I also do think it was a huge mistake to make Peter Pan, one of Disney’s heroes a villain. He was a great villain and his actor absolutely killed it, don’t get me wrong, but in the context of Disney canon, it was a bit jarring.

The same is to be said about Arthur. Don’t take King Arthur, of all people, and turn him into a jackass. That didn’t sit right with me and I think that could, and should, have been handled differently.

As a huge fan of Wizard of Oz canon, I have mixed feelings about Zelina. She was kind of a joke most of the time, her raping Robin was not good at all (beeecause that’s what it is when you shapeshift into the person the other one loves and then have sex with them under pretense to get yourself pregnant), but in the end it - and her - fit relatively well into all of this.

Was completely wasted for the entire Frozen arc, but even I, someone who loathes that movie with a burning passion, genuinely enjoyed the way the show was trying to fix it? Answer all the unanswered question the movie left and actually tie it into the Snow Queen fairy tale? Like, that was a feast and I love that they did that. Also Ingrid was hot and checked all my boxes so there’s that.

In the same way, I adore what they did with Ursula. That they took the scraped canon of Ursula being Triton’s sister and worked with that and that they in the end decided to redeem her too - though I am still very disappointed that we never got to see Ursula actually interact with Ariel at all. That’d have been so interesting. (Also, I admit, they went really overkill with having three Ursulas. Regina pretending to be Ursula, Ursula the ancient golden statue goddess and the actual Ursula, daughter of Poseidon).

I love Hades. I love Greg Germann’s take on Hades. He absolutely killed it. The whole underworld story was incredibly awesome to me personally - though I know others didn’t like that half-season as much. But I really dug that.

I think that it started to fizz out after that though and that after the underworld storyline, they probably should have drawn it to a close, because... after everything, after five whole seasons of watching redemption and working hard to make up for the things you did in the past, they really just decided “and now Regina is gonna physically split off her Evil Queen”... and made that Evil Queen the villain. That felt insanely repetitive of season 1 and like a set-back for Regina.

(The second half of that season didn’t go better because honestly that whole nonsense with “not only is Rumpel the son of Peter Pan, nope, now we bring in his mom the Evil Fairy”, featuring the very overused trope of “baby is magically aged up to be a character who can contribute to the plot”... Not the best.)

Also I refuse to acknowledge the existence of that reboot season. It’s bullshit is what it is. The show had the perfect ending. And then they immediately slapped a reboot onto it... why? If they had taken their time, wait ten years until nostalgia for the show kicks in and the actors all need work again, and do a proper “now Henry goes through shit”, that’d have actually been interesting, but... the moment I saw “so... we keep half the main cast, break up some OTPs, don’t age the adults up but age Henry up and also there is now a second Cinderella”, I knew that’s not gonna be good.

Seriously, the second Cinderella is what really fucked it over for me. What I loved about OUaT was that it gave very specific rules to its universe.

The Author documents the tales. The Author gives them their spin. But they are still the same tale. Be that the Brothers Grimm, who documented Cinderella, or then Walt Disney, it was still Cinderella, from the Enchanted Forest. Their stories were simply written down.

That they then, in the reboot season, went “well, actually There Are Many Cinderellas!!” completely contradicts the previously established rules of this world? Because yes, the concept very similar to Cinderella actually exists in many cultures - and that was the cool thing of OUaT’s take, because pressumably that is because the Author was in said culture at said time and documented the tale, as is the Author’s job.

Especially since it was so... unnecessary? I mean, they gave Rapunzel one half-assed episode in the past, they never tackled Gold Mary, they could have shown what became of Hänsel and Gretel now also grown up, etc. There were other unused characters that could have been brought in instead of throwing the rules out of the window.

But moving on from that; I love that they didn’t limit themselves to Disney movies - that they did prominently put Red Riding Hood (my favorite fairy tale character) in there, that they worked with mythology as well as books.

One thing they absolutely fucked up was their spin-off though. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. They made that. They decided that, out of everything touched upon in the series, Alice’s tale should get a spin-off... and then they didn’t use any of the actual characters?

Alice herself never got an appearance in OUaT, not prior or after the spin-off (only very much later in the reboot season, with a different Alice)

They had the Queen of Hearts on OUaT, but they didn’t use her as the main antagonist, or at least a huge deal, on Wonderland

They had the freaking Mad Hatter on OUaT, but he doesn’t even have a single cameo on Wonderland

And don’t give me “Seb Stan was too busy!”, because... even then, they could have recast. The Mad Hatter is kind of a big part of Alice in Wonderland, but... they ignored the majority of what is important in AiW in general, so there is that

They named the Red Queen Anastasia and very heavily implied that yes, the Anastasia who was the stepsister of Cinderella - but when OUaT’s original Cinderella got her stepsisters introduced, they suddenly had entirely different names than the Disney stepsisters and of course it wasn’t the same actress either

They introduced Jafar (for some reason) in Wonderland. And then recast him when Aladdin was tackled on OUaT and never addressed any of the things that happened on Wonderland, especially not how Jafar was the son of the sultan which would technically make him Jasmine’s brother

It was nearly dumb to move Will Scarlet to OUaT after the spin-off was axed, because at that point they legit just ignored Wonderland as a whole so this acknowledgment felt very off. But then it’s Michael Socha and I love him so I ain’t gonna complain about that.

So yes, I have mild issues with how they made a spin-off that had basically no inpact on the show, despite many elements that should have crossed over and carried significance in both shows.

Lastly, because we’re on the topic of spin-offs, I still would absolutely kill for a spin-off about Mulan, Merida and Ruby. Those three, exploring the Enchanting Forest together, training together, being gay together, it was the best thing. Which does force me to mention the gay. Because... Mulan was canonically in love with Aurora and when they set her up to find Ruby and journey with her, it came really off as them trying to make Mulan/Ruby happen. Then they introduce Merida, a very famously single princess, and you start to wonder. But in the end, it’s Ruby who ends up with Dorothy, aka two characters not associated with Disney. And it makes you wonder. (It doesn’t. We all know Disney is hugely homophobic. We all know OUaT most likely had some Disney executive yelling at them for even implying one of their characters may be gay. So they backtracked to give the wlw storyline to two characters that weren’t Disney property.)

Ah, I don’t like ending things on a negative note so one last positive - as weirdly as the Dark Swan arc was handled at parts, I absolutely love that Emma’s name being Swan really did pay off in making her the Swan Princess in the end and giving a nudge to Swan Lake with the Dark Swan. That was such a cool pay-off of something as small as a last name.

So, to sum it up, there’s some flaws in the writing, some things I wish would have been explored more, but overall good gods do I love and adore this TV show.

[emmagreen1220-blog]

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Allusion

Allusion Definition

Allusion can be defined as a casual reference to a person or a thing which adds extra meaning to the neighboring context. In other words, merely saying “The Good Samaritan is a character in a parable told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke” is not an allusion—it is merely a straightforward reference. However, it is an allusion when, for example, Julia says to Edward in T.S Eliot’s comedy The Cocktail Party (I.2.49-50): “Don’t you realise how lucky you are/ To have two Good Samaritans?”

Allusions are, by definition, indirect. That means that they are never explicitly clarified by the author and that they work pretty much like riddles: it is left to the reader to both identify them and make the connection to a previous text. However, sometimes this process can prove especially tricky.

For example, Alexander Pope’s verses are densely allusive, filled with both classical and topical references that can’t be understood without some proper help from a specialized scholar. Moreover, modernist poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound consciously strove to enrich their writings with obscure, esoteric and personal allusions, the understanding of which is frequently essential to understanding the meaning of the works as a whole.

In some cases, allusions may even have a structural significance: James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, for example, is modeled after Homer’s epic Odyssey and can’t be sufficiently made sense of without it.

ExamplesQuizFlashcardsWorksheets

Allusion Examples

Allusion in a Sentence

Example #1: Achilles’ Heel

Divorce is the Achilles’ heel of marriage.

– George Bernard Shaw, Letters (July 2, 1965)

According to a story in Greek mythology, in an attempt to make her son immortal, the sea nymph Thetis washed the baby Achilles in the waters of the infernal river Styx. However, as she was doing this, she held him by his heel, which remained the only vulnerable place on her son’s body. This would prove a fatal mistake, since, late in the Trojan War, an arrow fired by the Trojan prince Paris and guided by Apollo, pierced through the heel of Achilles, killing the great Achaean hero on the spot. In the 19th century, the phrase “Achilles’ heel” was first used to mean a weak spot in spite of overall strength—and George Bernard Shaw wittily plays with this meaning in his clever remark above.

Example #2: Janus

A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Friendship” (1841)

Janus was an ancient Roman deity, worshipped as a guardian of doors and gates, and as a god of transitions, beginnings and endings. He was depicted as having two faces—one looking back and another forward—and this is what Ralph Waldo Emerson alludes to in the sentences above, describing a friend as someone who is both an indelible part of one’s past and an architect of his or her future.

Example #3: Panglossian

Many searchers for life beyond Earth seem to be possessed of an almost Panglossian optimism, and since their speculations include the entire universe, their optimism might seem justified.

– Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books, November 2, 2000

Dr. Pangloss is a character in Voltaire’s 1759 satirical masterpiece Candide. A professor of “metaphysico-theologo-cosmoronology” he is a self-proclaimed optimist who firmly believes that we are living in “the best of all possible worlds” and that “all is for the best.” He remains convinced in the veracity of his beliefs even after countless misfortunes, which cost him an eye and an ear due to syphilis, and, at one point, even his freedom. Because of this, when someone is Panglossian, he or she is overly—and naively—optimistic.

(Further Reading: Top 10 Examples of Allusion in a Sentence)

Allusion in Poetry

Example #1: Dead Sea Fruits

May Life’s unblessed cup for him Be drugg’d with treacheries to the brim, With hopes that but allure to fly, With joys that vanish while he sips, Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips!

– Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817)

A Dead Sea fruit—sometimes also called a Sodom apple—is, according to the legend, a tempting fruit which dissolves into smoke and ashes once touched. Thomas Moore must have considered the allusion somewhat obscure when he wrote the above stanza in 1817 because he decided to annotate it himself, quoting a sentence by French explorer Jean de Thévenot as an explanation: “They say that there are apple-trees upon the sides of this sea, which bear very lovely fruit, but within are full of ashes.” A Dead Sea fruit is now used as an allusion to anything which may look promising at first but ultimately brings disappointment and discontent.

Example #2: Gehenna

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Winners” (1890)

Gehenna—or, literally translated, the “Valley of (the Son of) Hinnom”—is a place in Jerusalem, where, according to the Old Testament, worshippers of the pagan gods Baal and Moloch sacrificed their children by fire: “They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal” (Jeremiah 19:5). In time, the term came to symbolize Hell itself, so much so that the name given to Hell in the Quran, Jahannam, is a direct derivation of Gehenna. Additionally, the phrase “go to Gehenna” can be used as a more esoteric alternative to the everyday expression “go to hell.”

Example #3: The Mad Hatter

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

– T. S. Eliot, “The Naming of Cats” 1-4 (1939)

As almost everybody knows, the Mad Hatter is a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the eccentric host of one of the craziest tea parties you can ever imagine, also attended by the March Hare and the Dormouse. However, the phrases “mad as a hatter” and “mad as a (March) hare” predate Carroll’s book. According to OED, the first of these two expressions may refer to “the effects of mercury poisoning formerly suffered by hat-makers as a result of the use of mercurous nitrate in the manufacture of felt hats.” Ultimately, however, it’s irrelevant which of these sources is alluded to by T.S. Eliot in the stanza above—the meaning is immediately clear either way.

Example #4: Paris · Menelaus · Troy

I will be Paris and, for love of thee, Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sacked; And I will combat with weak Menelaus And wear thy colours on my plumed crest.

– Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus V.1.98-101 (1592)

This is what Doctor Faustus says to a summoned infernal spirit who has assumed the shape of Helen in the fifth act of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy. The wife of Menelaus, Helen was a Spartan princess who was abducted by the Trojan prince, Paris—an event which triggered the Trojan War. Doctor Faustus reimagines himself as Helen’s lover and, in a trance, rewrites parts of the original story: in Homer’s Iliad, it is Paris who is unskilled and cowardly, and Menelaus an epitome of bravery. A few verses above this passage, Marlowe describes Helen’s face as one “that launch’d a thousand ships,/ And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?,” a phrase which has been alluded to numerous times ever since.

Example #5: The Trojan War · Helen and Clytemnestra

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.

– William Butler Yeats, “Leda and the Swan” 9-11 (1923)

As you can read in the example above, Yeats finds an even more implicit way to allude to some of the people and events Christopher Marlowe calls into mind in Doctor Faustus. His sonnet “Leda and the Swan” vividly describes how Zeus, disguised as a swan, rapes Leda, the Queen of Sparta. From this union, Helen and Clytemnestra were subsequently born, the former responsible for the Trojan War (“the broken wall, the burning roof and tower”) and the latter the murderer of the Achaean leader (“And Agamemnon dead”). Thus, the three verses above hide allusions within allusions: by referring to the consequences (the Trojan War and the death of Agamemnon), Yeats actually alludes to the causes (Helen and Clytemnestra) without even using their names.

(Further Reading: Top 10 Examples of Allusion in Poetry)

Allusion in Literature

Example #1: Gargantua

You must borrow me Gargantua’s mouth first. ‘Tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size.

– William Shakespeare, As You Like It III.2.221 (1599)

This is what Celia replies to Rosalind in Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy, As You Like It, after the latter asks to answer her “in one word” a host of Orlando-related questions. (“What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes him here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again?”) The meaning of the sentence is clear as it is, but it becomes even more palpable once you learn that Gargantua is a giant, the title protagonist in François Rabelais’ satirical pentalogy of novels, The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel.

Example #2: Methuselah

Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don’t care—but if he was to come to our house with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn’t have anything to say to him.

– Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

The son of Enoch and the grandfather of Noah, Methuselah is the oldest man mentioned in the Bible; Genesis 5:27 claims that he lived to be 969 years. Consequently, the word Methuselah is now almost synonymous with longevity, and is often used to mean “extremely aged” or “ancient.” The phrase “as old as Methuselah” is also regularly used.

Example #3: Procrustean Bed

‘The measures, then,’ he continued, ‘were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he.

– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter” (1845)

Procrustes—literally, “The Stretcher”—was a street bandit in Greek mythology famous for the eccentricity of his modus operandi. Namely, he first invited travelers to lie on an iron bed he held in his possession, and, then, in an attempt to force them to fit the length of the bed, he either stretched them (if they were short) or cut off their legs (if they were longer than his bed). The adjective “procrustean” refers to this act, and means enforcing conformity through ruthless measures which disregard individual differences.

(Further Reading: Top 10 Allusion Examples in Literature)

Songs with Assonance

Example #1: The Cure, Killing an Arab (1979)

Standing on the beach With a gun in my hand Staring at the sea Staring at the sand Staring down the barrel At the Arab on the ground I can see his open mouth But I hear no sound

I’m alive I’m dead I’m the stranger Killing an Arab

Released a few days before the end of 1978, Killing an Arab was the controversial debut single of The Cure. As Robert Smith explains in a 1991 interview, the song “is a short poetic attempt at condensing [his] impression of the key moments in The Stranger by Albert Camus”—explicitly referenced in the chorus quoted above. However, the allusion was lost to many, leading to many accusations that Killing an Arab is a racist song which promotes violence against Arabs. As a result of the hostile response, The Cure rarely play the song even today; and when they do, they modify the last verse of the chorus to either “Killing another” or “Killing an Ahab.” And yes—the latter is another example of literary allusion!

Example #2: Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah (1984)

Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya She tied you to the kitchen chair She broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips, she drew the Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah

The second stanza of Leonard Cohen’s most covered song, Hallelujah, skillfully merges two biblical accounts. In the first three verses, it alludes to the story of David and Bathsheba, and the moment the Jewish king falls in love with the wife of Uriah the Hittite: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful” (2 Samuel 11:2). Furthermore, the second three verses refer to the story of Samson, an Israelite of enormous strength, who lost all of it after his lover Delilah betrayed him and cut his hair (Judges 13-16). However, Cohen subverts the climax of this story, portraying the emasculated Samson/David not as a bitter man, but one ready to greet his defeat with a “Hallelujah.”

Example #3: Frank Turner, 1933 (2018)

The first time it was a tragedy The second time is a farce Outside it’s 1933 so I’m hitting the bar.

Written—by his own admission—during the U.S. election campaign of 2016, 1933 refers, both in the title and in the last verse of the pre-chorus excerpted above, to the year when the Nazis came to power in Germany. In Turner’s opinion, something similar is happening around us at the moment. (The chorus states this explicitly: “I don’t know what’s going on anymore/ The world outside is burning with a brand-new light/ But it isn’t one that makes me feel warm.”) To point out how farcical this all seems, he alludes to a famous Karl Marx observation in the first two verses above. It can be found in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and, originally, it goes something like this: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

(Further Reading: Top 5 Songs with Allusion)

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