Say What?: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" versus "helter skelter"
Happy Friday, Fandom Grammar watchers! It sure has been one crazy week--which makes the topic of today's Say What? most appropriate: the idioms "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and "helter skelter." Thanks primarily to pop culture and events of the late 20th century, both of these idioms have come to be associated with madness and terror. As such, we'll be traveling to the sleepy resort town of Silent Hill for help in understanding their meaning and context.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Cinema fans of all ages and genre preferences will recognize this idiom. Film director Stanley Kubrick used it in his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining during the scene when Wendy Torrance, wife of would-be writer Jack Torrance, discovers that the “manuscript” that her husband was to spend the winter preparing is actually just a stack of papers on which he has repeatedly retyped the idiom in various formats. Her find solidifies her growing suspicion that Jack has gone mad, and the remainder of the film focuses on her and their son Danny's desperate escape from Jack and the accursed hotel that has claimed his sanity.
Although our popularized version of the idiom found its life once The Shining hit cinemas in 1980, the sentiment that it expresses has existed since 2400BC, making it twice as old as Jesus of Nazareth. In that year, Egyptian philosopher Ptahhotep, who served as vizier under the rule of Pharaoh Isosi, wrote in passage B-25 of his text, The Instruction of Ptahhotep:
“One that reckons accounts all the day does not pass a happy moment.
One that gladdens his heart all the day does not provide for his house.
The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim.
He that obeys his heart shall command.”
In the text, Ptahhotep calls for a balance of work and relaxation to make “one” both happy and accomplished with a broader horizon, thereby making him or her successful.
The idiom in its current form first appeared textually in James Howell's 1659 collection of idioms, Proverbs in English, Italian, French and Spanish. It has remained virtually untouched since then, although sometimes it has appeared with the added line “All work and no play makes Jack a mere toy.” Much like Ptahhotep's original passage, the idiom calls for a balance of both work and play in life and states that overworking yourself will make you uninteresting and lifeless, i.e. like a robot or drone. An example:
The clock on the wall said 5:43, and the sheriff was still there. Through the warped glass of the office window, Wheeler could make him out sitting behind his desk, ripping through the pages of some file. Wheeler got that the guy needed the distraction-something to take his mind off the fact that his younger kid had drowned and the older one had been carted off to a mental institution-but man, was he throwing himself into it.
He knocked on the office door. When he received no reply, he let himself in and said, “Hey, Sheriff.” Shepherd didn't look up. “Shepherd. Adam.”
Shepherd's head snapped up. “Huh? Oh, Jim. What is it?”
“It's a quarter till six, that's what it is. Time to pack it in for the day.”
Shepherd gave a sort of “eh” sound and turned back to the file.
“You know what that they say, right? 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' And, if I may speak freely, sir, you need the time off.”
“Not now, Jim. I've got a lot of work to do-a lot of things to try to sort out.”
“All right. But don't come crying to me when you get dull, Jack.”
It is thought that the inclusion of the name Jack derives from the French “Jacques Bonhomme” (which translates to “John Goodman” or “Jack Goodman”), a name that represents the general public and common man (much like “John Q. Public” or “Joe Nobody”) and implies that the possibility of becoming dull from working affects everyone. Thus, the name Jack can be replaced when you're referring to a specific person who might be affected. Another example:
“Aww, come on, James! Just one round?” said Laura, holding up the nearest bowling ball.
“No,” he told the girl. “We've got to find Mary. Don't you want to find her?”
“Of course I do. But we've been searching for forever. And I'm hungry and tired, and there're some chips and donuts over there.” She nodded toward the vending machine. “Don't tell me you're not tired and hungry. I bet you're more tired and hungry than I am.”
“I am not.”
“Liar. All work and no play makes James a dull boy.”
“You don't even know what that means.”
“Yes, I do. It means you're dull-you're a dullard. 'James is a dull-ard!'”she sang.
He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from screaming at her. “Fine,” he finally said. “One round. And then we go look for Mary. Got it?”
“Helter skelter”
First textually recorded in 1592, this idiom is a baby compared to “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” But over the course of its (relatively) short 400 years in existence, it has gained a level of infamy that the older idiom has never known.
That infamy stems first and foremost from its meaning. As demonstrated in Thomas Nashe's Four Letters Confuted, the text in which it originally appeared, “helter skelter” has always been used as either an adjectival or adverbial phrase to describe a chaotic, confusing, or disorderly happening or action:
“Helter skelter, feare no colours, course him, trounce him.”
Around the turn of the 20th century, British fairs and carnivals began to feature a new, colorful type of ride that consisted of climbing to the top of a lighthouse-esque structure and then sliding down a long, spiraling slide that wrapped around the structure several times back to the ground. Thanks to The Westmorland Gazette, which referred to these rides as “'helter-skelter' lighthouses” in a 1906 article, they became known simply as Helter Skelters. Many a British youth has spent his or her time at the local fairground climbing the stairs of its Helter Skelter only to slide back down and then climb up again just to do it all over.
Four such British youths include the members of the popular rock group, the Beatles. Their 1968 White Album featured a song called “Helter Skelter,” which compares the swirling motion of the ride to the fall of a power that has risen to the top. (Beatles vocalist and guitarist Paul McCartney has specifically mentioned the Roman Empire when talking about the “rise and fall” context of the song.)
As with any celebrity, the Beatles attracted their fair share of fanatics. One such fanatic was mass murderer Charles Manson, an extreme racist who believed that the four members were figures mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelations and that they spoke to him personally through their lyrics. Prior to the release of the White Album, he had been living in a desert in the southwestern United States, where he was garnering a group of followers consisting of disillusioned young people with his charismatic personality. Manson, upon hearing the album, misinterpreted the lyrics as a foretelling of a racial war between whites and blacks that would result in the Apocalypse. This war he dubbed “Helter Skelter.” To initiate Helter Skelter, he ordered the murders of prominent white members of the nearby Los Angeles community, including those of Folger coffee empire heiress Abigail Folger and film director Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate. The prosecuting attorney who helped convict Manson and four of his followers, Vincent Bugliosi, entitled his non-fiction novel about the case Helter Skelter. The book and case have inspired two films of the same name.
Perhaps due to its connection to such grisly crimes, “helter skelter” is no longer as commonly used as it once was. There exist several other idioms, all of which also consist of rhyming words, that describe a chaotic, confusing, or disorderly situation or action, including “pell mell," "higgledy piggledy,” “harum scarum,” and “hurly burly.”
An example of “helter skelter” and two of its sister idioms:
“It wasn't easy finding the way here,” said Douglas. “This darkness...the monsters everywhere...the rusted old junk strewn up and down the streets, all helter skelter-”
“'Helter skelter?'” Heather snorted. “I don't think anyone's used that one since Nixon was in the White House.”
He sighed. “What would you have me say, then?”
“I don't know. 'Pell mell.' 'Harum scarum.' Or you could just say what this place is, which is a disgusting dump,” she said, kicking at a piece of broken piping.
Sources:
The Beatles Bible
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
The Gold Scales
Internet Sacred Text Archive
The Phrase Finder
The Rutherford Institute
The University of Missouri-Kansas's School of Law
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Cinema fans of all ages and genre preferences will recognize this idiom. Film director Stanley Kubrick used it in his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Shining during the scene when Wendy Torrance, wife of would-be writer Jack Torrance, discovers that the “manuscript” that her husband was to spend the winter preparing is actually just a stack of papers on which he has repeatedly retyped the idiom in various formats. Her find solidifies her growing suspicion that Jack has gone mad, and the remainder of the film focuses on her and their son Danny's desperate escape from Jack and the accursed hotel that has claimed his sanity.
Although our popularized version of the idiom found its life once The Shining hit cinemas in 1980, the sentiment that it expresses has existed since 2400BC, making it twice as old as Jesus of Nazareth. In that year, Egyptian philosopher Ptahhotep, who served as vizier under the rule of Pharaoh Isosi, wrote in passage B-25 of his text, The Instruction of Ptahhotep:
“One that reckons accounts all the day does not pass a happy moment.
One that gladdens his heart all the day does not provide for his house.
The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim.
He that obeys his heart shall command.”
In the text, Ptahhotep calls for a balance of work and relaxation to make “one” both happy and accomplished with a broader horizon, thereby making him or her successful.
The idiom in its current form first appeared textually in James Howell's 1659 collection of idioms, Proverbs in English, Italian, French and Spanish. It has remained virtually untouched since then, although sometimes it has appeared with the added line “All work and no play makes Jack a mere toy.” Much like Ptahhotep's original passage, the idiom calls for a balance of both work and play in life and states that overworking yourself will make you uninteresting and lifeless, i.e. like a robot or drone. An example:
The clock on the wall said 5:43, and the sheriff was still there. Through the warped glass of the office window, Wheeler could make him out sitting behind his desk, ripping through the pages of some file. Wheeler got that the guy needed the distraction-something to take his mind off the fact that his younger kid had drowned and the older one had been carted off to a mental institution-but man, was he throwing himself into it.
He knocked on the office door. When he received no reply, he let himself in and said, “Hey, Sheriff.” Shepherd didn't look up. “Shepherd. Adam.”
Shepherd's head snapped up. “Huh? Oh, Jim. What is it?”
“It's a quarter till six, that's what it is. Time to pack it in for the day.”
Shepherd gave a sort of “eh” sound and turned back to the file.
“You know what that they say, right? 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' And, if I may speak freely, sir, you need the time off.”
“Not now, Jim. I've got a lot of work to do-a lot of things to try to sort out.”
“All right. But don't come crying to me when you get dull, Jack.”
It is thought that the inclusion of the name Jack derives from the French “Jacques Bonhomme” (which translates to “John Goodman” or “Jack Goodman”), a name that represents the general public and common man (much like “John Q. Public” or “Joe Nobody”) and implies that the possibility of becoming dull from working affects everyone. Thus, the name Jack can be replaced when you're referring to a specific person who might be affected. Another example:
“Aww, come on, James! Just one round?” said Laura, holding up the nearest bowling ball.
“No,” he told the girl. “We've got to find Mary. Don't you want to find her?”
“Of course I do. But we've been searching for forever. And I'm hungry and tired, and there're some chips and donuts over there.” She nodded toward the vending machine. “Don't tell me you're not tired and hungry. I bet you're more tired and hungry than I am.”
“I am not.”
“Liar. All work and no play makes James a dull boy.”
“You don't even know what that means.”
“Yes, I do. It means you're dull-you're a dullard. 'James is a dull-ard!'”she sang.
He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from screaming at her. “Fine,” he finally said. “One round. And then we go look for Mary. Got it?”
“Helter skelter”
First textually recorded in 1592, this idiom is a baby compared to “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” But over the course of its (relatively) short 400 years in existence, it has gained a level of infamy that the older idiom has never known.
That infamy stems first and foremost from its meaning. As demonstrated in Thomas Nashe's Four Letters Confuted, the text in which it originally appeared, “helter skelter” has always been used as either an adjectival or adverbial phrase to describe a chaotic, confusing, or disorderly happening or action:
“Helter skelter, feare no colours, course him, trounce him.”
Around the turn of the 20th century, British fairs and carnivals began to feature a new, colorful type of ride that consisted of climbing to the top of a lighthouse-esque structure and then sliding down a long, spiraling slide that wrapped around the structure several times back to the ground. Thanks to The Westmorland Gazette, which referred to these rides as “'helter-skelter' lighthouses” in a 1906 article, they became known simply as Helter Skelters. Many a British youth has spent his or her time at the local fairground climbing the stairs of its Helter Skelter only to slide back down and then climb up again just to do it all over.
Four such British youths include the members of the popular rock group, the Beatles. Their 1968 White Album featured a song called “Helter Skelter,” which compares the swirling motion of the ride to the fall of a power that has risen to the top. (Beatles vocalist and guitarist Paul McCartney has specifically mentioned the Roman Empire when talking about the “rise and fall” context of the song.)
As with any celebrity, the Beatles attracted their fair share of fanatics. One such fanatic was mass murderer Charles Manson, an extreme racist who believed that the four members were figures mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelations and that they spoke to him personally through their lyrics. Prior to the release of the White Album, he had been living in a desert in the southwestern United States, where he was garnering a group of followers consisting of disillusioned young people with his charismatic personality. Manson, upon hearing the album, misinterpreted the lyrics as a foretelling of a racial war between whites and blacks that would result in the Apocalypse. This war he dubbed “Helter Skelter.” To initiate Helter Skelter, he ordered the murders of prominent white members of the nearby Los Angeles community, including those of Folger coffee empire heiress Abigail Folger and film director Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate. The prosecuting attorney who helped convict Manson and four of his followers, Vincent Bugliosi, entitled his non-fiction novel about the case Helter Skelter. The book and case have inspired two films of the same name.
Perhaps due to its connection to such grisly crimes, “helter skelter” is no longer as commonly used as it once was. There exist several other idioms, all of which also consist of rhyming words, that describe a chaotic, confusing, or disorderly situation or action, including “pell mell," "higgledy piggledy,” “harum scarum,” and “hurly burly.”
An example of “helter skelter” and two of its sister idioms:
“It wasn't easy finding the way here,” said Douglas. “This darkness...the monsters everywhere...the rusted old junk strewn up and down the streets, all helter skelter-”
“'Helter skelter?'” Heather snorted. “I don't think anyone's used that one since Nixon was in the White House.”
He sighed. “What would you have me say, then?”
“I don't know. 'Pell mell.' 'Harum scarum.' Or you could just say what this place is, which is a disgusting dump,” she said, kicking at a piece of broken piping.
Sources:
The Beatles Bible
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
The Gold Scales
Internet Sacred Text Archive
The Phrase Finder
The Rutherford Institute
The University of Missouri-Kansas's School of Law