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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42674
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42674
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Absolutely. My own book is filled with references to Judaism and to American Jewish culture (the number 18 is one). In lots of those cases, it's explicit, but not always.

I would venture to say you already do this yourself. But you may not be aware that some of your references are culturally specific. Most of the time we're not. It's just mainstream culture. Being a minority religion/ethnic group in a large country, where references come from is often a lot more obvious. If you're in the majority, you don't always see it. But its there.

Your examples are short scenes but other ways to do it come from a larger structure. Such as making the arc of the novel reflect the arc of a religious set of events. In my case, I'm using the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors juxtaposed (literally) onto to the generational changes of the Children of Israel on the Exodus (where they end up wandering 40 extra years so that (almost) no adult who began the journey will finish it).

You can also reference things with very small bits interspersed throughout the story. For example, my first chapter is a Passover seder where they talk briefly about the Four Children. My story arc shows those 4 archetypal children in action, but I don't put them together as such or talk about it directly. It's for the (advanced) reader to work out.

You want your story to stand completely on its own without the reader even being aware of the references. Just like you can read _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ without any clue that the author was deliberately writing Christian allegory.

The purpose of the references is to create layered meaning. And to infuse your setting with a feeling (familiar or foreign, depending on the reader) that makes it your own. Most of it _should_ be invisible. Readers who see it will be pleased with themselves. And people doing literary analysis will be over the moon.

Original score: 8