1. Allusion

2. Allusion
A reference to a well-known person, place, event (history), literary work (book or poem), work of art, or object.
Allusions are everywhere.

3. “Rene has a Peter Griffin laugh.”
Allusion Example:
“Rene has a Peter Griffin laugh.”
From Family Guy

4. “Rene has a Peter Griffin laugh.”
If you who Peter Griffin is, then you know that he has an annoying laugh.
Therefore, you know how Rene in the sample sentence laughs.
Allusions activate prior knowledge and help the reader understand the text.

5. Allusions
Allusions activate prior knowledge and help the reader understand the text.
However, not all allusions are clear.
Sometimes the reader has to work to understand the allusion.
Can provide insight into a character

6. Allusion Example: Look at the word the blocks create. “Redrum”
From Family Guy

7. The word “redrum” first appears in the movie The Shining.

8. Family Guy
The Shining

9. Allusions are NOT references to someone or something only a small group of people know.
So this is not an allusion: “Sally’s smile looked like my mom’s smile.”

10. Purpose of Allusion:
Lets the reader understand new information, characters, plot, setting, etc. by connecting it to something already known.
Contributes to theme and/or characterization.

11. Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s use of allusion in The Sound of Things Falling

12. Bogotá, Colombia -– Antonio Yammara, a college professor, befriends Ricardo Laverde, a recently released prisoner.
Antonio Yammara, a college professor, befriends Ricardo Laverde, a former drug trafficker, at a pool hall.

13. One day, Laverde comes into possession of a cassette tape and seeks Yammara’s help listening to it.

14. Casa de Poesía, a cultural center housed in “the former residence of the poet José Asunción Silva.”
Coincidentally, the city of Bogotá is celebrating Silva’s work.

15. NOCTURNE
José Asunción Silva ( )
One night,
One night all full of murmurs, of perfumes and the brush of wings,
Within whose mellow nuptial glooms there shone fantastic fireflies,
Meekly at my side, slender, hushed and pale,
As though with infinite presentiment of woe
Your very depths of being were troubled,--
By the path of flowers that led across the plain,
You came treading [ ]
As Laverde listens to his tape, Yammara listens to a reading of Jose Asunción Silva’s poem “Nocturne.”

16. Thesis
Gabriel Vásquez uses this allusion to “Nocturne” to characterize the novel’s characters and foreshadow death.

17. Topic Sentence
For Laverde, “Nocturne” reflects his hollow existence.

18. Laverde’s cassette tape contains the black box recording of a crashed plane – his wife’s.

19. “I noticed that Ricardo Laverde was crying. [
“I noticed that Ricardo Laverde was crying. [ ] [Laverde] wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, then his sleeve, with murmurs and music of wings [ ] [he] brought his hands together like someone praying. And your shadow, lean and languid (Vásquez 38).”
From “Nocturne”

20. In “Nocturne,” the speaker copes with the death of his lover, the very same thing Laverde does. However…
In Silva’s “Nocturne,” the speaker copes with the death of his lover, the very same thing Laverde does. Although, in the above quote, the “shadow” refers to the speaker’s lover, it also describes Laverde at the moment.

21. “I noticed that Ricardo Laverde was crying. [
“I noticed that Ricardo Laverde was crying. [ ] [Laverde] wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, then his sleeve, with murmurs and music of wings [ ] [he] brought his hands together like someone praying. And your shadow, lean and languid (Vásquez 38).”
He has become a hollow shell of a man, a “shadow” filled with grief, as he listens to the “music of [mechanical] wings” coming undone, the sound of his wife’s death (Vásquez 38).
Someone is taunting Laverde with this cassette, and he has no idea why. But what is clear is how powerless he is. He cannot stop the forces of fate—or even man. He really is just a shadow, the corporeal form of nothing.

22. Sketched by the white moonlight's ray Upon the solemn sands 15
From “Nocturne”
And your shadow 11
Languid, delicate;
And my shadow,
Sketched by the white moonlight's ray
Upon the solemn sands 15
Of the path, were joined together,
As one together,
In these lines, the speaker’s shadow merges with his lover’s. It’s a romantic image; however, in The Sound of Things Falling, it foreshadows Laverde’s death

23. Laverde meets his fate.
When he leaves the Casa de Poesía, an unknown man on a motorcycle shoots and kills him. At this point, Laverde literally becomes nothing. Vásquez’s allusion to “Nocturne” helps the reader understand the depth of Laverde’s sadness and grief. It also undercuts the slightest bit of hope “Nocturne” affords the reader, which may be Vásquez’s purpose: to highlight the utter bleakness of life, that all around us are The Sound of Things Falling.

24. The Sound of Things Falling

25. Works Cited
Silva, José Asunción. “Nocturne.” Poetry Archive. Web. 11 Mar
Vásquez, Juan Gabriel. The Sound of Things Falling. New York: Riverhead, Print.