The Pagemaster - Literary Allusions

Literary Allusions

There are several smaller allusions to poems, books, and rhymes in the movie in addition to the more obvious ones:

• Adventure intentionally opens Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne in order to release a giant squid.
• Richard, Adventure, and Fantasy are pursued briefly by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles when Richard opens the hound's book.
• Above the doorway of Dr. Jekyll's mansion, a raven calls out "nevermore" and then flies off. Both the raven and the doorway are references to the poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
• Horror calls out "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" as he is being dragged into a hole in the floor by Mr. Hyde. This is an allusion to Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which is set in a time period when churches offered limited sanctuary from arrest.
• The small figures who tie down Horror on the beach are Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
• The magic carpet that appears when Fantasy uses the story of Arabian Nights to help escape from the dragon is from her 1001st page, a nod to The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (an alternate name for Arabian Nights).
• While inside the belly of the dragon, Richard opens Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, releasing The Queen of Hearts who shouts "off with his head!".
• There are brief appearances by Mother Goose and Humpty Dumpty, two well-known nursery rhyme characters.
• Fantasy claims that she wears "Little Mermaid underwear", a reference to either Hans Christian Andersen's story, or the Disney animated film. A scene from the latter is referenced when Ahab spots Moby Dick.
• There is a reference of Cinderella as Fantasy wears glass slippers.
• There is a possible reference of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, as Richard is still alive inside the Dragon's stomach just like Pinocchio in the belly of The Terrible Dogfish.
• There are two references to The Wizard of Oz - once when Richard asks Fantasy if he has to "click his heels" in order to go home, and again when the characters are seen walking on a yellow brick road.
• There are two references to A Christmas Carol - the first when Richard slides down the hallway and we hear some dialogue of the introduction to the Ghost of Christmas Past, and the other when Richard, Adventure and Fantasy walk in a graveyard and one of the graves says "Jacob Marley", and even has chains.
• There are two references to Jack and the Beanstalk - the first when Richard slides down the hallway and we hear the giant roaring Fe, Fie, Fo, Fum, and when Richard uses a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk to grow the titular beanstalk out of the dragon's mouth.
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand features on screen at one point, amongst a pile of giant books that fall on the characters. When Richard lifts the book off him, he lifts it in a way reminiscent of Atlas lifting the celestial sphere.

• Various other books are seen on screen, though no explicit reference to these are made. These include The Shining and Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.