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

to have got the name Evan Hunter from the names
of two schools he attended, Evander Childs High
School and Hunter College. His other pseudonyms
included Ed McBain, under which he published
pop u lar crime fi ction. His hair had turned white after
ten years in the blackboard jungle.
Black Death A disease of uncontrollable, epidemic
proportions. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the disease
that originated in Asia and swept Eu rope between
1348 and 1351, killing about one third of the
entire population. <strong>The</strong>re were further epidemics
in 1361–62 and 1379. <strong>The</strong> disease has since been
identifi ed as pneumonic and bubonic plague. Scientists
are worried that modern civilization could be
devastated by a second Black Death.
black hole A void into which vast amounts of
money or other resources disappear. <strong>The</strong> allusion
is to the black holes of astronomy, hypothetical
entities of negative energy that result from the
gravitational collapse of stars. Anything that falls
into a black hole is trapped within it forever, hence
the modern interpretation of a black hole as any
place into which things disappear irrevocably. “<strong>The</strong>
worst thing about cocaine is that once it has
exhausted all the dopamine from the brain, then
what’s left is a black hole of depression so big and
so awful that not all the misery in the world can fi ll
it” (Bernard Cornwell, Crackdown, 1990).
Black Hole of Calcutta (kalkbtb) A place of
cramped, overcrowded confi nement. <strong>The</strong> allusion
is to the tiny dungeon in Fort William, Calcutta,
into which 146 captured British soldiers of the
British East India Company were locked overnight
by Siraj- ud- daula, Nawab of Bengal, on June 20,
1756. By dawn all but 23 of the prisoners (including
the one female prisoner) had died from heat
exhaustion and suffocation. <strong>The</strong> incident led to an
outcry in Britain. “<strong>The</strong> former they ran to earth at
last at the smithy, a tiny Black Hole of Calcutta
where Matthew Grimble, the blacksmith, lived
with his portly wife and ten portly children” (Mary
Gervaise, <strong>The</strong> Distance Enchanted, 1983).
Black Lagoon, Creature from the See creature
from the black lagoon.
Black Monday A day when stock prices fall dramatically.
<strong>The</strong> allusion is to Monday October 19,
1987, when the Dow Jones average on wall
street fell by 500 points, triggering fears that the
economies of the Western world would slide into
a depression of a severity not seen since the great
depression of 1929. <strong>The</strong> market lives in fear of a new
Black Monday.
Black Rock, bad day at See bad day at black
rock.
Black Sox scandal See say it ain’t so, joe.
Blanche DuBois
Blanche DuBois (blahnch doobwah) Archetype
of a faded Southern belle. Blanche DuBois is a
central character in the 1947 play A Streetcar
Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1911–83).
Brutalized by her brother- in- law Stanley Kowalski,
Blanche’s already tenuous hold on reality
quickly disintegrates and she descends into madness.
<strong>The</strong> play ends with her touchingly pathetic
and deluded observation that she has always
relied upon the kindness of strangers. <strong>The</strong> character
was memorably brought to life by Vivien
Leigh in the 1951 fi lm version of the play. She
wants to spend the summer in the Deep South, lounging
on a verandah like some superannuated Blanche
DuBois.
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