Shattered (Butterfly on A Wheel) (2007)
Saw this movie – Shattered today. The line – Butterfly on a Wheel, borrowed from poet Alexander Pope. To break a butterfly on a wheel = to putting massive effort into achieving something minor or unimportant. The wheel was a medieval instrument of torture. Victims were strapped to it while their limbs were broken with iron bars. Here is the poet:
Let Sporus tremble –
“What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’r enjoys…
Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
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