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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42662
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42662
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **Most definitively!**

In fact these types of cultural references serve two purposes. On one hand, _they are for the reader_: if the reader identifies it, it may resonate with the feeling that the reference is attached to. On the other other hand, _they are for the writer_, and this is the most important: they come handy to the writer in writing a certain scene. It is like the blue-print of a particular setup which has been polished for hundred of years in the attempt to express exactly that one thing. Cultural references are basic tools for the artists of any form of art.

Enlarging your basket of references is like acquiring new tools. You can provide a fresh narrative, free of the usual imagery, and be safely guaranteed by millennia of polishing that you are going to achieve your expressive goal.

As with any such cheap tool, the obvious caveats are:

- don't make them too obvious, else you lose the showing effect in favor of a tedious telling
- don't exceed with the dose: a reader may put down a book if it start to look like a religious/political travesty
- study the original well, in particular its meaning before you evoke the wrong feeling in the reader.

A final point about your question of making them identifiable to the reader: **don't**. You are the magician. Don't reveal your tricks, else the magic is lost and all the remains is some stylistic gimmick.

Original score: 6