As my pastor once pointed out, the individual (a Jewish “lawyer” who asked “who is my neighbour?”) Jesus was directing the story at couldn’t even bring himself to say it:
Luke 10:36-37
[Jesus asked,] Which now of these three [a Jewish priest, a Levite, or the Samaritan], thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And [the lawyer] said, He that shewed mercy on him.
“He that showed mercy on him”, rather than “the Samaritan”.
I read an interview with some famous supermodel from an Eastern European country (don’t recall her name now) who said her brother’s name is Zoltan. She said she was very surprised when she came to America to learn that the name “Zoltan” is considered a “funny” name, most suitable for characters like … comedic space aliens. She said that back in her country, it’s considered a very masculine-sounding name.
As to the OP:
I nominate Dick. Dick started out as the hero of many beloved children’s books. Now, his name is invoked to describe somebody who’s being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk
Eighteen of the Bounty’s crew stayed aboard as mutineers. The other eighteen accompanied Bligh in the ship’s launch on his epic 3600 mile voyage to Timor. He later testified that four of the “mutineers” were actually loyalists he had to leave behind simply because there wasn’t room for them in the launch. This rather suggests that while he may have been an asshole (apparently, he was very very sarcastic) he wasn’t a sadist.
I’m afraid you’ve got this completely wrong. According to Ovid, Midas was the kindhearted but poor king of Lydia, who took in and sheltered Dionysus’ fosterfather, Silenus. As a reward, Dionysus granted Midas’ golden wish. But when his food and wine (and, according to one author, daughter) turned to gold, he prayed to the god to take his gift away. Dionysus told Midas to bathe in the river Pactolus; this apparently transferred his orogenic ability to the river.
The river Pactolus was in fact a gold-bearing river in Lydia, in Asia Minor, and the Lydians minted the first coins (that we know of, anyway).
***The Sound of Music ***has given audiences the impression that Captain von Trapp was a stern, cold disciplinarian whose heart was melted by the fun-loving Maria, who taught him to be a happier, more mellow person and a more loving father.
In reality, all the von Trapp children agree, Captain von Trapp was a warm, jolly fellow, and Maria was the disciplinarian of the family.
Indeed, in Stowe, Vermont, where the family settled after the war, Maria is remembered as (1) “Stowe’s premier tourist attraction”, and (2) “That old bitch”. She was indeed a formidable personality.
Certainly. But because everything Bugs Bunny says sounds like an insult, those not familiar with the biblical character assumed calling Elmer a ‘little Nimrod’ was snark. Therefore, being a nimrod must be a bad thing.
OK. So when we use the word “lolita” today we’re talking about a sexually precocious girl below the age of consent. It sounds to me like that describes the character in the book; or at least, the criterion in the OP that the archetype be the opposite of the original character does not apply.
One I found very much worth reading was Jack Whyte’s telling of the tale. It centers on Merlin (named as Caius Merlinus Brittanicus) and is the story of an attempt to preserve civilization as they know it in the power vacuum of the ebb of the Roman Empire. He skillfully weaves the Arthurian legends into stories in historic context that have a compelling feel of reality - Excalibur is “drawn” from a stone; drawn in the blacksmith sense from a nickel-iron meteorite (which is basically stainless steel) and many other such.
He is tragic and misunderstood. He is a brilliant and caring man who is feared and loathed purely because of his appearance. He is rejected by his creator, not for any deficit of character or being, but merely because the creator cannot fathom the creation. He is abhored and reviled purely for his grotesqueness, not for his behavior or intentions.
But then because of all that, he retaliates against his creator. In that he is a calculating and malicious killer. He feels justified, but he isn’t, for he strikes out not at Dr. Frankenstein himself (who the monster needs), but through innocents close to the doctor.
Nobody said:
In the novel he is not just of average intelligence, he is rather brilliant. He becomes fluent in several languages and studies philosophy and art. By the time he returns to Dr. Frankenstein, he is very articulate. He does, however, begin life mute and confused and uneducated, and after escaping Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, sets up residence under an old farmhouse, where he begins learning about people and language.
smiling bandit said:
Linky? Wiki was unhelpful. Ronald C. Semone said:
A prior discussion on Job:
You are correct. From Dex’s column:
That hardly sounds like patiently accepting his fate.
Skald the Rhymer said:
There are certainly different interpretations of that part of the book. One version is that God is throwing around his might to cow Job into submission. Another take is that God is straightforward saying “Were you there at the creation? Can you make a star from nothingness? How can you possibly understand me and my motivations? Who are you to question me?”
It is about the question of evil: Why do bad things happen to good people? Job is the essential good person who has bad things befall him, not because he has sinned and offended God, but merely because shit happens.
**smiling bandit ** said:
See above 25 chapters does not equal briefly.
That is certainly the traditional interpretation. As I said, a common reading of the text conveys a different meaning to modern ears.
Ají de Gallina said:
Where do you encounter that usage? The closest I’ve seen is describing a situation of little guy vs big guy as David vs. Goliath, with the implication that the scenario may appear over matched, but the little guy has an ace in his sleeve or the virtue of being right or something.
Thudlow Boink said:
I think most people don’t know what a “Samaritan” is, or that a “good Samaritan” is oxymoronic, much less why. The probably think “Samaritan” means something like “traveler” or “stranger”.
rhubarbarin said:
Would it make you feel better if it took time, rather than just a few seconds?
Rats will attack defenseless people - like sleeping people.
So while rats may not typically swarm an adult human, if confined where they have access to your face, you have no way to protect yourself, and left for a period of time, then yes, they will likely attack and eat your face.
Little Nemo said:
I don’t think that really counts. The significance of Scrooge is his pre-Carol persona, not the man he becomes. Yes, the story is about his redemption, but the character is the grumpy miserly attitude that brings the story about. It’s fair to equate “Scrooge” with “miserly grump”.
thelurkinghorror said:
Wiki has this to say:
IIRC, Verne makes comments about Nemo’s motivations in 20,000 Leagues, but doesn’t actually discuss details enough to pinpoint his origins. Seems he changed his intent after original writing, so whatever clues he may have veiled were sufficiently vague to allow reinterpretation.
Alessan said:
Most Americans would think (a) they pronounce their name wrong, and (b) their name sounds funny (either way). Though “nim-rod” is certainly funnier by exposure.
Time to tackle some real classics! Though constantly held up as paragons of virtue and uncommon wisdom, both the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were not at all reticent about trespassing when they felt it served their purposes. Even a bit of minor filching was not beyond them. Furthermore, in an episode when Nancy goes out west she finds it necessary to kill a lynx, a rattlesnake, and fire a few shots at a bobcat. (I’m not sure what a lynx was doing that far south, anyway, but here in Alaska where they do reside you can count the number of lynx attacks on humans on the fingers of one foot.) The Hardy Boys were forever pushing their luck and, as a result of such poor judgment, would be trapped in mines, trapped by crooks, caught in various bad situations.
Finally, by the middle of the book (if not much earlier) the reader knew who the bad guys were, how they were committing their crimes, where they were hiding out, and probably even their shoe sizes yet it always tooks towards the last quarter of the book for the obvious to be deduced by these sleuths.
Plus, I have my suspicions Nancy Drew was a Republican but that’s neither here nor there. (And what’s with her going with that Ned Nickerson guy for umpteen years and nary even a heated handholding?)
Apologies if I’ve missed it in this thread, but I have read the book, and wasn’t it strongly implied that Homer was actually CIA? And his actions thus presaged American involvement taking up where the French left off. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, though.
I don’t know if Atkins was with the CIA, but the point remains: he was NOT a loud, boorish American tourist, which is how the term “Ugly American” is used today.
It’s been awhile since I read it but I’m pretty sure it happened. When he sees her the last time and she is pregnant and married, after he leaves he realizes that he destroyed her childhood and that is the crime he is truly confessing.
Ned meant nothing to her. She was holding out for a rich older guy who could finance her roadsters and sleuthing sprees. He was occasionally convenient to help her climb out of abandoned wells, but she secretly loathed him for his slavish devotion and wished he’d transfer his affections to Bess.
Think about what drove people to be a socialist in say the 1920s. Let’s put it this way: pretend you were a miner in the U.S. around then. Maybe you’d become friends with Joe Hill, maybe you knew someone killed at the Columbine mine, maybe you’d had your own head busted open by a strikebreaking goon. You’d also seen newspaper accounts of all of these things that portrayed the mine owner as an innocent victim, and the people who actually suffered as crazy anarchists deserving of torture before death. So you knew firsthand that capitalists were violent, if not actively bent on killing at least OK with some collateral deaths, and quite capable of lying about anything that might hurt their interests.
So when some newspaper owned by the same guy that ran a copper mine told you that Stalin was bad, you might naturally take that with a grain of salt.
I think your missing the joke here. Everyone in Baraterria calls Sancho a great governor, but they never allow him to actually do anything.
Don Quixote was insane. The comedy in the book comes from the fact that he tries to play the valiant knight and fails miserably. To hero worship him is to miss the point that he was insane.
Indeed. It was a great joke for all involved that Sancho would be a governor. They basically treated it like they couldn’t think of anything funnier. Plus the Duke that made him governor was engaged in a long-term plan to humiliate Quixote…
I think that Cervantes did a good job of keeping the extent of Quixote’s insanity ambiguous. Sometimes, he seemed to be utterly crazy. At other points, especially in part 2, he seemed to be somewhat aware of the fact that he was the butt of multiple jokes.
Captain Nemo is probably generally thought of today as a scientist/inventor who was far ahead of his time, but in origin he was not only that, but also a terrorist (if a rather sympathetic one). In both the book and the Disney movie, Nemo is a crusader against imperialism and goes out of his way to destroy the warships of colonialist powers; the other characters are captured by him when he attacks the US warship Abraham Lincoln. It’s thus rather ironic that the United States named its first nuclear submarine the Nautilus after his ship.
