The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

waiting for Godot
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fl ock to pray there and to slip pieces of paper bearing
prayers and requests between the stones. <strong>The</strong>
paper has an agony column that acts as a sort of wailing
wall for those people working in the industry who feel they
have been short- changed by their employers.
waiting for Godot (godo) Waiting at length for
something to happen, especially something that is
unlikely ever to take place. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to Samuel
Beckett’s celebrated play Waiting for Godot
(1952), in which two tramps, named Vladimir and
Estragon, wait for someone called Godot, who
never comes. An eloquent comment upon the futility
of existence, the play confounded and fascinated
contemporary critics and audiences and has since
exercised a profound infl uence upon world drama.
Beckett himself denied that Godot was God. “It was
an appealing image, and an appealing movement for
radicals hunting their red snark, and tired of waiting
for Godot” (Nigel Fountain, Underground: <strong>The</strong>
London Alternative Press, 1988).
Walden (woldbn) An idyllic rural retreat. <strong>The</strong>
allusion is to the book Walden; or, Life in the Woods
(1854) by U.S. writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–
62), in which the author describes two years he
spent living in seclusion in a cabin in the woods on
Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, seeking to
escape the complications of the modern urban world
and to regain contact with nature. After ten years in
the big city, he longed for a Walden to escape to and
bought a lonely cottage a couple of hours out of town.
walk on water To achieve the apparently impossible
and emerge unscathed. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the
biblical episode (related in Mark 6:45–56 and Matthew
14:22–33) describing how Christ rescued his
disciples during a storm by walking to their boat
over the water of the Sea of Galilee. Over the years
his per for mances on the soccer fi eld won him countless
fans, many of whom believed he could walk on water if he
chose to.
walk with God See enoch.
walls have ears Say nothing, as it is all too easy to
be overheard. Though probably much older, the
expression is most familiar as a slogan of World
War II warning people to be guarded in their conversation
lest they let slip information that could
be useful to enemy agents. I would tell you everything
here and now, but walls have ears.
walls of Jericho (jeriko) A seemingly invincible
obstacle that is miraculously overcome without a
blow being struck. <strong>The</strong> reference is to the biblical
episode of the fall of the city of Jericho before the
Israelites. Joshua 6:1–20 describes how Joshua and
his forces, bearing the Ark of the Covenant, surrounded
Jericho for six days. On the seventh day
they awaited a signal from their leader “when the
people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the
people shouted with a great shout, that the wall
fell down fl at, so that the people went up into the
city, every man straight before him, and they took
the city.” Like the walls of Jericho, the board’s objections
against the proposal collapsed as soon as promises of
substantial compensation were received.
Wall Street <strong>The</strong> fi nancial center of the United
States. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the street in lower Manhattan
in New York where the Stock Exchange
and other banking and insurance concerns have
their headquarters. <strong>The</strong> term is now commonly
used fairly loosely to refer to the U.S. stock market
and big business in general. <strong>The</strong> wall in the street’s