illusion
What is Illusion? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples
Illusion Definition
An illusion (ih-LOO-zuhn) is a false or deceptive image, idea, or impression, or else a mistaken or erroneous perception. Illusions are most commonly associated with tricks of the senses, like optical and auditory illusions that deceive the eye or ear. When applied to literature, an illusion can be a narrative technique, such as a dream, vision, or other device that misleads, confuses, or tricks a character. However, illusion also refers to the process of reading that leads to immersion, when the reader experiences the narrative as if it were real.
The word illusion stems from the Latin illudere, meaning “to mock” or “to deceive.”
How Illusions Work
Real-life illusions trick your senses, like how a straw partially submerged in water appears to be bent or damaged. In reality, the straw is straight as ever, but the water’s refractive index creates a distorted effect—an optical illusion. The McGurk Effect is a visual-auditory illusion that uses a visual to trick your sense of hearing (you can experience it in this YouTube video from the BBC).
In literature, writers use illusions for multiple reasons. Aesthetic illusion refers to the immersive reading experience, which is made possible through authentic worldbuilding, developed characterization, rich description, vivid imagery, a clear mood and atmosphere, and other narrative techniques. All of these characteristics contribute to the illusion of an authentic and credible story.
Writers can also use illusions as plot devices. An unreliable narrator can weave a misleading story that requires readers to unravel the deception. Hallucinations, dreams, visions, and other illusory experiences can motivate or impede the protagonist, or provide readers with hints about the narrative’s ultimate conclusion. One character might present with a facade or persona to trick another, or a story might incorporate illusion into its theme, such as fact vs. fiction or perception vs. reality.
Aesthetic Illusion
Aesthetic illusion describes the mental captivation triggered by the consumption of media, including literature. A writer successfully achieves an aesthetic illusion when readers become so immersed in a story through imagination or emotion that it feels real. Despite this absorption with the fictional world, the reader remains aware of the external world. Thus, aesthetic illusion has a dual nature, with readers suspended between artifice and reality.
Readers most commonly encounter two types of aesthetic illusion in literature: fictional and factual.
Fictional Aesthetic Illusion
Fictional stories are works of imagination that feature fabricated settings and characters. Because fictional stories are made up, they engage the reader’s imagination to construct the narrative illusion. Readers must envision the scene on the page to achieve immersion. Most literary devices and figures of speech can be utilized to help craft a successfully immersive narrative, including description, imagery, point of view, and so on. Some genres, like science fiction and fantasy, require more imagination than others, such as historical fiction or works of realism, which leverage the reader’s real-world experiences and associations to create a stronger sense of verisimilitude.
Factual Aesthetic Illusion
Works of nonfiction like biographies, historiographies, travelogues, and the like are inspired by real people or events. Because these narratives are grounded in fact, they require less imagination to establish aesthetic illusion. However, literary devices that play upon our senses or emotions are still crucial to ensure the reader is engrossed with the text.
Illusion vs. Allusion
Although illusion and allusion are very close in terms of spelling and pronunciation, the two have very distinct definitions. An illusion is a falsehood, an image or impression that deceives the mind or senses. An allusion is a reference. Both words share the same Latin root: ludere, meaning “to play.” While illudere means “to mock” or “deceive,” alludere means “to refer to” or “play with.”
Allusion is a literary technique that refers to an object or subject that exists outside the text, such as another book, an author, a character, a place, or an event. These references use the reader’s preexisting knowledge to easily express or contextualize an idea. The title of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury alludes to Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The reference originates from the soliloquy in Act 5, Scene 5, where Macbeth says, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This allusion emphasizes the idiocy of the novel’s characters, it foreshadows their downfall, and it bolsters Faulkner’s belief that stories are meaningless unless they explore universal truths.
Illusion in Pop Culture
There are illusions throughout popular culture. Movies and TV shows often take advantage of their visual format to use optical illusions to develop a scene. The Twilight Zone frequently used mirrors to trick both characters and the audience. Visual media also use illusions to create practical effects, like how The Fellowship of the Ring mixed forced perspective with a moving camera to make Gandalf appear bigger than Frodo.
The movie Fargo uses a different kind of illusion to trick the audience. The film begins with this bit of exposition:
This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.
However, aside from a couple details, the story is wholly fictional. The preface serves to create a more immersive experience; viewers are liable to become more invested in the story if they believe it truly occurred. The Fargo anthology series maintains this deception to make each season of the show seem more believable.
Open-world roleplaying games are a great case study in aesthetic illusion. Red Dead Redemption 2 is one example of a highly immersive video game that uses extensive worldbuilding to achieve a sense of authenticity. The plot takes notes from American history and geography, using Pinkerton detectives, suffragettes, and the city of Saint-Denis, which is modeled after 19th-century New Orleans, to create a setting that’s recognizably and undeniably American yet still fictional.
The Functions of Illusion
Illusion contributes to an immersive reading experience. When a narrative seems so authentic, so realistic that readers react with an active imagination and an emotional response, as if the story’s really happening, then they’re truly engaged with the text. This sensation is an important characteristic for people who use books to escape the real world for a time.
Illusion also functions as a narrative device that can shock, surprise, and deceive readers and characters alike, such as through the revelation of a hallucination or a narrator’s unreliability. Additionally, illusory artifacts and experiences provide clues that help readers guess how the plot will unfold.
Examples of Illusion in Literature
1. Flannery O’Conner, “Good Country People”
“Good Country People” is a short story that explores religion and Southern culture, and how both obscure reality in the modern South. The story follows Hulga, a 32-year-old woman who lost her leg after a shooting incident in her childhood. Hulga is an atheist and a philosopher, both points of contention with her religious mother Mrs. Hopewell.
The story’s major theme revolves around perception vs. reality, or illusion vs. truth. The women encounter a Bible salesman whom Mrs. Hopewell deems “good country people,” a phrase she uses to describe moral but simplistic individuals. Hulga fancies seducing the man, but after they abscond to the barn loft, he uses his innocent demeanor to get close enough to take her prosthetic leg and glasses. This shatters Mrs. Hopewell’s stereotypical perception: The salesman is not good, moral, or religious, but an atheistic, opportunistic criminal who steals and collects prosthetics. Selling Bibles was only an act, an illusion to appear trustworthy and exploit other people. In exposing the salesman’s deception, the story also exposes the illusion of an ideal Southern society.
2. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
This semiautobiographical series of linked short stories crafts its narrative using the author’s personal experiences during the Vietnam War. The book is a work of metafiction, a genre in which texts repeatedly reference their status as fiction to explore the boundary between literature and reality. To create the illusion of a memoir, O’Brien combined truth and verisimilitude with fictional characters and imagined events. For example, he names his first-person narrator Tim O’Brien and references real-life experiences, but he dedicates the text to the fictional characters of Alpha Company. In doing so, the book addresses the illusory nature of narratives, both factual and fictional, and the nature of truth.
3. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
American Psycho is another novel that demonstrates how illusion serves as a plot device. Readers are exposed Patrick Bateman’s first-person, stream-of-consciousness narration, in which he details everything from acts of murder to his extensive personal grooming routine. But the other characters, who are not privy to the inner workings of his mind, perceive him as a charismatic, educated, and successful man, one worthy of respect and admiration. One of the novel’s key themes is the way perception and expectation distort the truth and make us blind to reality. Bateman’s status as an unreliable narrator adds an additional illusory element to the text, as readers must determine the difference between the truth and his recounting of events.
4. Cormac McCarthy, The Road
The Road is a work of postapocalyptic dystopian fiction that exemplifies aesthetic illusion. Everything about the text suggests desolation, and every facet of the novel contributes to this image, with the novel achieving and maintaining its bleak illusion through imaginative visualization, emotionally charged writing, fragmented narration, and a viscerally dark atmosphere.
Further Resources on Illusion
Writing Explained takes a deeper dive into the difference between illusion and allusion, and provides a trick to help keep them straight.
This video explains how films use illusory techniques—such as editing, cinematography, and special effects—to create that famous “movie magic.”