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

if thy right eye offend thee
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fact, the story appears to have made its fi rst
appearance in an essay by the En glish phi los o pher
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), around a thousand
years after the event described. “<strong>The</strong> child scrambled
up to the top of the wall and called again and
again; but fi nding this of no avail, apparently made
up his mind, like Mahomet, to go to the mountain,
since the mountain would not come to him” (Anne
Brontë, <strong>The</strong> Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848).
if thy right eye offend thee If part of you tempts
you to do wrong, then you need to take radical
action to deal with it. This piece of proverbial
advice comes from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount,
as recounted in Matthew 5:29: “And if thy right
eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee:
for it is profi table for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.” <strong>The</strong> line is sometimes
quoted with reference to the expulsion of rebellious
members of organizations or institutions. It
is also found in the variant form if thy right hand
offend thee. “If it chance your eye offend you, /
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound” (A. E. Housman, A
Shropshire Lad, 1896).
ignorant armies Forces that seem to act without
any underlying understanding of what they are
doing. <strong>The</strong> phrase comes from Matthew Arnold’s
poem “Dover Beach” (1867), which includes the
lines “And we are here as on a darkling plain /
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fl ight, /
Where ignorant armies clash by night.” <strong>The</strong> phrase
is typically used in reference to po liti cal disagreements.
<strong>The</strong> newspapers were, as usual, full of reports of
the latest doings of Parliament’s ignorant armies.
Igor (eegor) A henchman or servant, especially
one who is dim- witted and physically grotesque
and is employed as a laboratory assistant by a mad
scientist. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the deformed servant
called Igor who features in numerous horror fi lms
of the 20th century based upon Mary Shelley’s
original 1818 novel frankenstein. Every department
head has his or her Igor, who does all the tedious,
routine work considered beneath his boss’s dignity.
I have a dream I have a vision of an improved
future. <strong>The</strong> phrase is most familiar as a refrain in
the speeches of black civil rights activist Martin
Luther King in the 1960s, specifi cally a speech he
made to a vast audience in Washington on August
28, 1963: “I have a dream that one day this nation
will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self- evident,
that all men are created equal.’ ” He repeated the
phrase several times during the course of this and
other speeches, and since his death it has acquired
iconic status as a summary of his vision for a harmonious
future in which all races could exist happily
alongside each other. When not referring
directly to Martin Luther King and his ideals, the
phrase today tends to be used ironically. ‘I have a
dream,’ Bob announced, ‘that one day this company will
rise up and get proper washroom facilities.’
Iliad (ileebd, ileead) A written work or other
tale of epic proportions, especially one dealing
with acts of heroism. <strong>The</strong> original Iliad was a celebrated
epic poem of great length supposedly composed
by the Greek poet Homer around 700 b.c.
Its title comes from the Greek Iliados (meaning “of
Ilium,” Ilium being an alternative name for Troy),
and it relates the events that took place toward the
end of the Trojan War, which culminated in the
death of Hector at the hands of Achilles. Only a
very select number of great literary works have
since been considered good enough to be ranked