Popular culture is an excellent area for teachers to start when providing students with examples of allusions. Students are probably already familiar with these works simply because they come from popular culture. For instance, a teacher could use the example, “As soon as I learned my neighbor’s full name I googled her.” In this example, “googled” is an allusion to the search engine, Google. Google has become so saturated in the culture that it is now often used as a verb. Most students would immediately recognize what this statement means: one neighbor researched the other neighbor using the Internet. However, the teacher must teach the students how “googled” is actually an allusion.
Teachers can also use literature as another source of allusions. With literary allusions, the teacher has a greater responsibility to actually teach the reference as well as the allusion. For example, the phrase “To be or not to be: that is the question” is the famous line from Hamlet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play, "Hamlet." In the scene, Hamlet is questioning whether it is better to live or to die. In some cases, it might be important for the student to know the meaning of the original quote. Often the power of this allusion is simply knowing that it came from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, regardless of its original meaning.
A final major body of allusions is sacred texts, particularly the Bible. The Bible is replete with allusions that are so common in today’s lexicon that many people do not even recognize that the allusions are from the Bible. For instance, the Golden Rule is an allusion from the Bible. Although this phrase itself is not in the Bible, the essence of its meaning is found in the Gospels of Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12. Luke 6:31 in the New International Version quotes Jesus as saying, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” That is the Golden Rule, and it has no meaning outside of its description in the scriptures. The teacher must illustrate that this is not just a rule; it is an allusion.
The meaning of the allusion comes from outside of what is being directly discussed. As such, allusions are grounded in the work but tie the audience to ideas that rest outside of the work. Allusions weave the reference to the audience, the audience to the culture, the culture to the history, the history to the language, the language to the society, the society to the reference and the reference back to the audience. If you do it well, the result is a tapestry of narrative and meaning.