What Is The Nursery Rhyme Christian Repeats To Himself In The Accountant?

Initial critic reviews of "The Accountant" may not have been so kind, but the movie hit it off swimmingly with audiences, and a sequel is on the way. The warm reception from fans is likely because the 2016 movie tried to provide the action genre with something different. The Indonesian artial arts style featured in "The Accountant," pencak silat, made for some impressive fight scenes, and its plot, although confusing at times, at least aimed to offer a unique story. "The Accountant" centers on Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), a man diagnosed with autism as a child who has grown to become a for-hire accountant for criminal organizations.

With such a dangerous job, it makes sense why Christian would want to keep a low profile and especially keep himself calm despite being involved in some very stressful and dangerous incidents. After all, assassins are on the hunt for him. And a fated reunion with his hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) doesn't exactly make for a warm family moment. Yet Christian does employ a unique method to calm himself down. Throughout the film, we see that Christian often repeats an old nursery rhyme to himself. But what is the rhyme, and what are its origins?

In "The Accountant," Christian Wolff is heard reciting "Solomon Grundy," a nursery rhyme that can be traced back to 1842 thanks to nursery rhyme collector James Orchard Halliwell, who first recorded it (via Poem Analysis). The rhyme tells the life and death of a man named Solomon Grundy, all within a single week. With its simple rhyme style and mention of each day, it's clear that the nursery rhyme was innocently used to help children learn their days of the week. However, when we look into the fact that Thursday through Sunday detail the tragic end of Mr. Grundy due to an unspecified illness, it's hard to ignore the dark undertones.

The darkness of "Solomon Grundy" was not lost on DC Comics, which probably developed the most popular interpretation of the rhyme: an undead monster stuck in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Fans of "Stargirl" became familiar with the character since he appeared as a villain in Season 1 before becoming more of a misunderstood creature in Season 2. While it's probably a bit of a stretch to say that "The Accountant" is linked to DC Comics through Wolff's recitation of "Solomon Grundy," the film has a much more believable DC Easter Egg in the form of a particular "Superman" comic.