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Unable to succeed as a writer and deserted by his wife, Reardon is driven to an early grave.

Sisyphus In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king of Corinth, punished in Hades for his misdeeds by being condemned endlessly to roll a rock up a hill which then always rolled back down again. His name can allude to efforts to achieve orfinishsomething which constantly fails. • See special entry n HADES on p. 172.

compared its existence to that of Sisyphus. Now yet again the boulder has gone all the way uphill and rolled straight back over all our toes.

The Guardian, 1994

Fatness

Some of the entries below have their counterparts at the theme Thinness. For instance, the fat knight FALSTAFF contrasts with the thin knight Don Quixote. Whereas RUBENS is the painter most associated with depicting plump female figures, the names of El Greco and Modigliani suggest leanness. • See also Large Size.

Billy Bunter Billy Bunter is the rotund bespectacled schoolboy hero of a series of stories by Frank Richards set in a boys' public school called Greyfriars. The stories first appeared in the Magnet comic in 1908. Known as 'the Fat Owl of the Remove', Bunter wears an enormous pair of check trousers.

I took after my mother, and already at that age was inclined towards flab. (Yes, m'lud, you see before you a middling man inside whom there is a fattie trying not to come out. For he was let slip once, was Bunter, just once, and look what happened.)

JOHN BANVILLE The Book of Evidence, 1989

She has turned my Romeo into a sad-eyed Billy Bunter who blinks his passions quietly when no one's looking. Oh, that his too, too solid flesh should melt. MINETTE WALTERS The Scold's Bridle, 1994

Falstaff Sir John Falstaff is the fat, witty, good-humoured old knight in Shakespeare's Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. FalstafPs enormous paunch prompts the young prince Hal to ask: 'How long is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?' Observing Falstaff fleeing an ambush, Hal remarks:

'Falstaff sweats to death

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.'

It was all so fine, so precise, and it was a wonder that this miracle was wrought by

Tank Engine (first appearing in 1946), the Fat Controller presides over the Big Station with self-important and bureaucratic officiousness.

Mr Pickwick Mr Samuel Pickwick is the central character of Charles Dickens's novel The Pickwick Papers (1836-7). Founder of the Pickwick Club, he is jovial, generous, and unworldly in character and short, plump, and bespectacled in appearance.

great dew-laps, and three vast chins; his small features were all dissolved in fat; and, but for a crescent of white hair at the back of his head, he was completely bald. He reminded you of Mr. Pickwick. He was a grotesque figure of fun, and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity,

w. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Mackintosh, 1951

Upright, he looked like Mr Pickwick, with a chubby rubicund face and a fringe of long white hair around a gleaming pink scalp.

ANABEL DONAL The Glass Ceiling, 1994

Miss Piggy Miss Piggy is a puppet creation of Jim Henson that has appeared in the television series The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. She is a large pink pig with long blonde hair.

I just know I've put on at least half a pound. The bus driver's going to notice and give me a pitying look, sort of saying, 'Well, hello, Miss Piggy, how do you expect to get a seat on the bus with that fat arse?'

ARABELLA WEIR Does My Bum Look Big in This?, 1997

Rubens Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was the foremost Flemish painter of the 17th century, an exuberant master of the Baroque. Many of Rubens's paintings feature voluptuous female nudes, displaying his sheer delight in fleshy women. The word 'Rubenesque' can be used to describe a woman's attractively plump and rounded figure.

Upstairs, I took off all my clothes and had a full view of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was getting fat all right. I turned sideways, and looked round so that I could see the reflection of my hip. It was nicely curved and white like the geranium petals in the dressmaker's window-ledge. 'What's Rubenesque?' I asked Baba. 'I don't know. Sexy, I suppose. Why?' A customer said I was that.'

EDNA O'BRIEN The Country Girls, 1960

The old couple in the room next door moved out and were replaced by two plump Rubensian nymphs whose life was a permanent party for all manner of local Romeos.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Sehor Vivo and the Coca Lord, 1991

Silenus In Greek mythology, Silenus was an old woodland spirit who was a

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descending. It's the birds, even more of them than I have seen before, covering the sky . . . I hunch down to protect myself. This is pure Hitchcock.

ANDRÉ BRINK Imaginings of Sand, 1996

Nightmare on Elm Street Nightmare on Elm Street is the title of a gory horror film made in 1984 in which a killer called Freddy Krueger, who has knives for fingernails, brutally murders teenagers in their dreams. Thefilmwas followed by several sequels.

If health professionals and writers took the middle line between Never-Never Land and Nightmare on Maternity Street perhaps Life After Babies wouldn't be quite such a rude awakening.

The Independent, 1994

Phobos In Greek mythology, Phobos, one of the sons of Aphrodite and Ares, was the god of dread and alarm. He was often represented with a lion's head.

Psycho Psycho is the title of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, released in i960. The film centres on Norman Bates, a murderous psychopath who is the owner of the Bates Motel, and includes a famously shocking murder scene in which a woman is stabbed repeatedly by Bates in her shower.

The owner, whom I roused from a backroom television den, didn't look anything like Norman Bates, and treated the whole transaction as if it was just his job. It made me wonder if we Europeans are the only ones to conjure up an instant vision of Psycho on journeys into the unknown. Americans at least had experience of motels long before that particular highway was removed and Norman's mother slept once too often with her new lover.

SARAH DUNANT Snow Storms in a Hot Climate, 1988

Fertility

Fertility deities are central figures in world myth. This theme is closely related to the theme Abundance and Plenty.

Abraham Abraham was a biblical leader, considered to be the father of the Hebrews. All Jews claim descent from him (Gen. n : 2 7 - 2 5 : 10).

In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and the terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success.

THOMAS HARDY The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886

Aphrodite In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty, fertility, and sexual love. Her Roman equivalent was Venus.

Her mood now was that of Aphrodite triumphing. Life—radiant, ecstatic,

wonderful—seemed to flow from her and around her.

H. RIDER HAGGARD She, 1887