God from the Machine

Though I am a writer, I do not spend much of my time ruminating on literary devices.  I have better things to do with my time, like clean my floors, tool around on Pinterest, or write my own literary matters.  But I do have a literary mind, and so sometimes I find odd things floating around in my head.  These odd things usually appear in my blog posts.  (By the way, I just lost the Game—see my post from last week.) 

Today’s item is deus ex machina, literally “god from the machine”, a literary device that doesn’t usually get a very good rap.  Deus ex machina is a plot device, used by authors to get characters out of an impossible situation.  It was first used in Greek drama: the hero would be in deep and stinky shit, and all would be lost—but lo!  One or more of the gods were cranked onto the stage, using his/her/their great power to solve the problem with little to no effort.  Modern examples are less obvious, but some that have been cited to me (spoilers ahead) include the sudden appearance of Scotty in “Star Trek: Into Darkness” to rescue the endangered Enterprise at the last second, as well as Tolkien’s eagles, a failsafe that Gandalf uses throughout the books to pull him and his company out of emergencies.  Now, these days, people like to think themselves independent from the gods, but even back in the days of the Greeks this was frowned upon as a method to end a story.  If a problem is solved by the gods, what good is the hero?  Is a hero really a hero if he or she has to be rescued?

Honestly, I would argue yes.  Maybe as children we want our heroes to be infallible, but as adults we start to see ourselves as the heroes—perhaps “protagonists” is the better word—of our own stories, and suddenly things aren’t so black and white.  Stories for mature readers have a lot of gray areas.  The villains have redeeming features and reasons for their villainy, while the heroes have deep flaws and dark secrets.  And yes, these heroes do sometimes fail.  In those moments, they do need someone to rescue them, and I find this to be perfectly acceptable.

Don’t mistake me—it still is very wrong for an author to make a hero incapable of rescuing him- or herself.  These heroes aren’t worth the title.  But if somewhere along the way, the hero stumbles and falls and has to be rescued, I would argue that this is all right, even desirable, so long as it isn’t the end of the tale.  The hero must then learn from mistakes made and find the way to the ending, where she or he will be responsible for the ultimate result.  To me, that is a very realistic path.  After all, as any successful person can tell, it’s our failures that teach us the most about ourselves and about how to succeed.

Photo from http://literature.wikia.com/wiki/Deus_ex_machina