You’re on the right track! This is an adjectival phrase—
but what kind of adjectival phrase is this?
Marty’s presence at the dance was definitely a Catch-22 situation; if he talked to Cindy she’d be mad at him, but if he ignored her, there’d be hell to pay. His anger bubbled to the surface. He realized that by coming to the dance, he had brought his problems with him in a Trojan Horse, and he could only hope he would be able to keep them bottled up.
Catch-22|Correct! The first allusion is Catch-22, a reference to the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; this should suggest a situation where there is a problem with no right answer—whatever you do will be wrong. If you’ve read Heller’s nove, you know exactly how Marty is feeling.hell| Correct! There is also a reference to “hell,” which evokes images from the Bible and something definitely unpleasant.Trojan Horse|Correct! The third reference is to the Trojan Horse from Virgil’s Aeneid, which chronicles the Greeks conquering Troy by giving a gift of a large, wooden horse to their enemies and filling the belly of the horse with warriors. This is a vivid image, if you recognize it.
