Classic Literature

Big Brother

An all-seeing authority that monitors and controls.

Catch-22

A no-win situation whose escape clauses contradict each other.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Falling into a strange, absorbing, often disorienting investigation or world.

Dracula

The aristocratic vampire — seductive, dangerous, undying.

Faustian Bargain

A deal that gives you what you want now at the cost of something you'll regret losing later — typically your soul, or its modern equivalents.

Frankenstein

A creator who builds something they cannot control.

Jekyll and Hyde

Someone with two sharply opposed sides — respectable in public, monstrous in private.

Kafkaesque

Nightmarishly absurd, especially in the face of impersonal bureaucracy.

Machiavellian

Cunning, manipulative, and willing to do whatever is necessary to retain power.

Orwellian

Reminiscent of totalitarian surveillance, propaganda, and language control.

Scrooge

The miserly, joyless tightwad — and, by the end of the story, the cautionary tale of one.

Sherlock Holmes

The template for every brilliant, prickly detective who solves crimes by spotting what everyone else missed.

The Great Gatsby

The American Dream as a glittering, hollow pursuit that ends badly.

The Wizard of Oz

The all-powerful authority who turns out to be an ordinary man working levers behind a curtain.

Animal Farm

The fable of a revolution that becomes the tyranny it overthrew.

Atticus Finch

The archetype of the principled lawyer who defends an unpopular client because it's right.

Brave New World

A dystopia where people are controlled by pleasure rather than fear.

concept

Chekhov's Gun

A storytelling rule: every prominent element introduced in act one must matter by act three.

Cheshire Cat

A grinning, riddling figure who appears and disappears at will — and whose smile lingers after the rest of him is gone.

Dorian Gray

Someone who stays outwardly young and beautiful while their inner self decays.

Lord of the Flies

Civilization is a thin veneer that collapses fast when adults aren't watching.

Mad as a Hatter

Eccentrically, theatrically insane.

Moby-Dick

The white whale as the obsession that destroys.

Pollyanna

Someone whose optimism is so relentless it borders on willful denial.

Quixotic

Idealistic to the point of being impractical.

Byronic

Dark, magnetic, brooding, emotionally troubled — and usually self-aware about it.

Miss Havisham

The jilted bride frozen in time — a figure of grief so total it becomes its own kind of madness.

Shangri-La

A hidden utopia — a remote, perfect, almost-mythical refuge.