Deus Ex Machina
- “what is deus ex machina”
- “god from the machine meaning”
- “is deus ex machina bad writing”
- “deus ex machina examples”
:: COMPARE ::
Deus ex machinavsChekhov's gun
The short answer
Exact inverses. Chekhov's gun fires what was planted; deus ex machina fires what was never planted. One rewards the attentive reader; the other tells them their attention was wasted.
Side by side
| Aspect | Deus ex machina | Chekhov's gun |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | None | Required |
| Arrives from | Outside the plot | Inside it |
| Reader feels | Cheated | Rewarded |
| Aristotle's view | Forbidden | — |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Deus Ex Machina rather than Chekhov's gun are usually searching for phrases like “what is deus ex machina”, “god from the machine meaning”, “is deus ex machina bad writing”.
Chekhov's Gun
- “what is chekhovs gun”
- “if a gun appears in act one”
- “chekhovs gun vs foreshadowing”
- “did chekhov say rifle or pistol”
Which came first
Deus ex machina. c. 335 BC — Aristotle, in the Poetics, insists the unravelling must come from the plot itself 'and not produced mechanically as in the Medea'.
- c. 335 BCDeus Ex MachinaAristotle, in the Poetics, insists the unravelling must come from the plot itself 'and not produced mechanically as in the Medea'.
- 1889Chekhov's GunChekhov writes to a fellow writer: 'One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.'
Read either one in full