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The Adventures of Augie March Allusions & Cultural References

When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.

Mythology References

  • Zeus 1.26
  • Ulysses 5.1
  • Hephaestus 5.18
  • Sinbad 5.30
  • Achilles 6.52
  • Aeneas 7.80
  • Medea 8.57
  • Troy 8.138
  • Paris 15.15
  • Helen 15.15
  • Prometheus 15.16
  • Circe 16.74
  • Osiris 22.50
  • King Arthur 22.52

Biblical References

  • The Bible 5.11
  • Solomon 5.27
  • David 8.74
  • Moses 9.7
  • Jesus Christ 9.36
  • Balaam (the diviner in the Torah, not the garden in Final Fantasy VIII) 11.113
  • Jonah 12.64
  • The Tower of Babel 13.169
  • Noah 15.30
  • Elijah 15.30
  • Cain 15.40
  • The New Testament 18.86
  • St. John 20.62
  • Herod 20.62

Literary and Philosophical References

  • Niccolò Machiavelli 1.3
  • Anna Karenina 1.27
  • Eugene Onegin 1.27
  • Natty Bumppo (character in Leatherstocking Tales novels) 1.29
  • Quentin Durward 1.29
  • The Iliad 2.51
  • William Shakespeare 5.11
  • Aristotle 5.43
  • Robinson Crusoe 6.2
  • The Voyage of the Beagle 6.20
  • Friedrich Nietzsche 11.16
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 11.16
  • John Calhoun 11.16
  • Espirit des Lois 11.17
  • Macbeth 11.118
  • Lucretius 11.135
  • Baruch Spinoza 12.110
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau 15.10
  • Karl Marx 15.10
  • Mikhail Lermontov, "The Eagle" 15.30
  • The City of the Sun 18.83
  • Utopia 16.83
  • Discourses (Machiavelli) 16.83
  • The Prince 16.83
  • Friedrich Engels 16.83
  • Auguste Comte 16.83
  • François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld 20.36
  • Denis Diderot 20.36
  • Nicolas Chamfort 20.36
  • Søren Kierkegaard 21.89
  • Thomas Aquinas 21.113
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 21.113
  • Lucius Seneca 21.117
  • Plato 21.154
  • John Locke 21.54
  • "Ozymandias" 22.17
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge 23.1
  • La Comédie humaine, Balzac 24.12
  • The Divine Comedy 24.35
  • Thucydides 25.11

Historical References

  • George III 1.4
  • Napoleon Bonaparte 1.5
  • Frederick the Great 1.5
  • George Rogers Clark 1.29
  • Marcus Cato 2.28
  • Georges Danton 3.6
  • Chevalier de Bayard 3.6
  • Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus 3.6
  • Julius Rosenwald 3.35
  • Nero 3.42
  • John Dingbat O'Berta 5.3
  • Henry V 5.12
  • Alcibiades 5.26
  • Socrates 5.26
  • Henry Ward Beecher 5.26
  • Teddy Roosevelt 5.30
  • Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni 5.43
  • Christopher Wren 5.43
  • Marcus Tullius Cicero 5.43
  • Al Capone 5.43
  • Sir Cedric Hardwicke 5.45
  • Croesus 7.1
  • Phidias 8.54
  • Sandro Botticelli 8.54
  • Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rij 8.62
  • Plutarch 11.12
  • Alexander 11.112
  • Commodus 11.114
  • Xerxes 13.20
  • Constantine 13.20
  • Guy Fawkes 13.38
  • Stonewall Jackson 13.169
  • Charlemagne 15.2
  • Edward of Woodstock, (Black Prince) 15.32
  • Emperor Gaius (Caligula) 15.36 (and every time the Thea's eagle is mentioned by name)
  • Atilla 16.20
  • Ethelred the Unready 16.38
  • Leon Trotsky 17.73 (and elsewhere as Augie sees him from a distance)
  • Ulysses S. Grant 20.34
  • Anne Geneviève de Bourbon (Duchesse de Longueville) 20.36
  • Mahatma Gandhi 20.47
  • Prince Albert 20.47
  • Marcus Licinius Crassus 21.91
  • John Dillinger 22.61
  • Basil Banghart 22.61
  • Tommy O'Connors 22.61
  • Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown (Three-Finger Brown) 24.4
  • John Factor (Jake the Barber) 24.4
  • Basil Zaharoff 24.4
  • Ivar Kreuger (The Swedish Match King) 24.4
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 24.8
  • Vladimir Lenin 25.13
  • Oliver Cromwell 15.13
  • Franz Joseph Haydn 26.13
  • Christopher Columbus 26.180

Pop Culture References

  • It Can Be Done 5.30
  • Ramon Navarro 16.54
  • Sherlock Holmes 25.130