How Did Barack Obama Use Allusions In Dreams From My Father

Could past generations of people’s family affect their way of life and their future? From hearing stories about his grandparents and his parents past, Barack Obama formed his judgement on the world. While living in different regions of the world, he experiences a variety of cultures and how people are treated differently. As a child, Barack Obama did not have his father in his life, therefore he focuses on his father’s absence in his life. Obama has a unique usage of dialogue, allusions, and chapter structure throughout Dreams from My Father which connects the reader to his childhood and moments in his life forming his identity.

To separate a new stage of his life from age and location, Obama splits the book into three parts: Part 1 “Origins”,

Some of these allusions help develop the setting of a certain period of time and how America was at the time, such as when he “celebrated his sixth birthday” and acknowledges “ Jimi Hendrix performed at Monterey” along with “three years after Dr.King recieve[s] the Noble Peace Prize” (Obama 11). These references give a timestamp that this event occurred around the late 60s or early 70s and when the world starts recognizing black accomplishments and “demands for equality” (Obama 11). Additionally, he includes events in the past as an example to get his point across. In the book, Obama attempts the explanation of how religion and faith cause people to do certain actions and how everyone “cl[ings] to [thei]r own foolish magic” (Obama 163). As an example, he includes “ the crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial [and] the Freedom Riders at the lunch counter”, which these people were influenced by their own faith and it led to major events in history that are “locked in our own memories”(Obama 163). The allusions used to connect the present to the past and include well-known events to inform the reader or to help the reader understand his points because of the knowledge they have of the people or events he