Fahrenheit 451 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.

Literature and Philosophy

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1.38)
Walt Whitman (1.38)
William Faulkner (1.38)
Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp (1.334)
Dante (1.530)
Jonathan Swift (1.530), Gulliver’s Travels (1.682, 3.335)
Marcus Aurelius (1.530)
Helen Bannerman, Little Black Sambo (1.530)
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1.530)
Samuel Johnson (2.2)
James Boswell (2.7)
Sophocles (2.181)
Aeschylus (2.202)
Shakespeare (2.46, 2.169, 2.329, 3.39), Julius Caesar (3.49), Hamlet (1.588)
Henry David Thoreau (2.55), Walden (3.444)
Luigi Pirandello (2.169)
George Bernard Shaw (2.169)
John Milton (2.181)
Eugene O’Neill (2.202)
The Chesire Cat, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (2.245)
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (2.328-33)
Sir Philip Sydney (2.373)
Alexander Pope (2.373, 2.376)
Dr. Johnson (2.380)
Paul Valéry (2.382)
Thomas Hardy (3.314)
José Ortega Y Gasset (3.314)
Plato (2.46), The Republic (3.330, 3.332)
Arthur Schopenhauer (3.335)
Aristophanes (3.335)
Thomas Love Peacock (3.335)
Lord Byron (3.338)
Niccolò Machiavelli (3.338)

Benjamin Franklin (1.311)
Hugh Latimer (1.325)
Thomas Jefferson (2.55, 3.335)
Marcus Aurelius (3.332)
Einstein (3.335)
Charles Darwin (3.335)
Abraham Lincoln (3.335)
Albert Schweitzer (3.335)
Confucius (3.335)
Thomas Paine (3.338)
Bertrand Russell (3.344)
The Magna Carta (3.353)
The Constitution of the Untied States (3.353)

Hercules and Antaeus (2.130)
Tower of Babel (1.349)
The Bible (2.42, 2.56, 2.186, 2.243)
Old and New Testaments (2.51)
Job and Ruth (2.329)
Book of Ecclesiastes (3.319, 3.388)
Book of Revelation (3.319, 3.388, 3.411)
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (3.335)
Jesus Christ (3.338)
Mahatma Gandhi (3.335)
Gautama Buddha (3.335)