Deus Ex Machina vs. A Twist

[Team 2012]

Isn't it more like ANYTHING showing up to fight on the side of a WIZARD is more because of the wizard's power than some DEM? That's kind of the upside of being a wizard, is it not?

And if you have these eagles doing this periodically, can that really be considered the "out of the blue" type mechanism we associate with DEM? It's quite a bit different from a safe falling on somebody.

We've been discussing the DEM concept as regards our own pet obsession, the 2012 thing. Relevant to this post in these terms: okay, you have a catastrophic end of the world ("catastrophic" in it's actual meaning, not the disaster movie context that seems to have--shockingly--determined the Hollywood approach).

But the whole thing is foretold on a holy calendar. The watch was wound for a certain number of ticks and they're over. So, how DEM is that?

I suppose you could go further and say that salvation (or at any rate a socko last chapter) be comet collision could be seen as something predictable, foreshadowed, and part of the setup.

Is that to abstruse? We can never tell.

 

[HareBrain]

Thinking about it, if I hadn't first read the Hobbit, I think I would have been baffled by the eagles turning up at the Black Gate at all, so I think you're right Teresa, they have to be taken together.

Shame no one at the Council of Elrond thought about asking the eagles to carry Frodo to -- oh, what's this? An injunction? For me?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Shame no one at the Council of Elrond thought about asking the eagles to carry Frodo to -- oh, what's this? An injunction? For me?

That's been asked before, of course, and Tolkien answered it -- in his letters, I think.

As far as I'm concerned, the answer can be pretty much summed up in Tolkien's statement that eagles are not kindly birds. There is only so much you can ask them to do.

 

[HareBrain]

Right, I'm changing my mind about the eagles. I do think their use is consistent through both stories, but they are used as a "recurring DEM" - nothing else. Their only function is to rescue people for whom no other rescue is possible. And I wonder if that is why no one at the Council suggests asking them, because they don't fully fit within Tolkien's conception of his world, so he doesn't consider the possibility of them doing anything other than the role he's assigned them.

I guess you could argue that a recurring DEM can't exist, as after the first time it isn't an out-of-the-blue surprise. But I'd like to invent this classification and stick the eagles in it.

 

[Sapheron]

I could hold with that. Their arrival definitely smacks a little of DEM; the whole them not being a part of the story until they were needed for a very specific role sort of gives it away for me.

I'd be inclined to say that, much as I love him, Tom Bombadils appearance is also a very obvious DEM; he suddenly appears out of nowhere to save the hobbits from Old Man Willow.

 

[PTeppic]

The "obvious" DEM no-one's mentioned, for the above, is a long-lost party of dwarves, who finally escaped the fighting against the orcs down some of the really long tunnels and have just resurfaced, by chance, within Mount Doom. They break off the spur of rock that Sam and Frodo are on and, since this is SFX-director version, they lava-surf back to safety...

 

[dreir]

..Their only function is to rescue people for whom no other rescue is possible..

Exactly.

I guess you could argue that a recurring DEM can't exist.. ..But I'd like to invent this classification and stick the eagles in it.

I like this.

As to taking LOTR and the Hobbit as separate works, that may be part of the explanation since I first read LOTR before I read the Hobbit, but I don't think I changed my mind much after I read the latter. We just don't feel as robbed because it happens after the ring is destroyed. At that point, we hoped that the two little guys would be okay, but we'd understand if they didn't make it. This softened the DEM blow a lot.

Whether anyone can objectively say it's a true DEM or not, however, one thing I'm certain of, is that if you're writing your own story, try to avoid wrapping up the climax like this

- Dreir -

 

[Peter Graham]

Let us not confuse a DEM with a Contrived Plot Twist. The whole point about DEM is that Zeus (or equivalent) is obliged to give up chasing after pretty Greek girls whilst dressed as a swan, a shower of gold or Johnny Depp in the pirate films and instead interfere with a plot and wave his divine wand (no pun intended) to direct the outcome.

DEM is therefore about someone other than the main character doing something which radically affects the Big Outcome. I'm sure Tolkien knew this better than any of us, which is precisely why the best plan that the assorted nabobs, baghwans and wisebeards of Council Of Elrond could come up with was to send a workshy fop and his head gardener into the jaws of death with nothing but a bit of rope, some cooking pans and a dreary sense of impending doom to help them.

This is why I think that the eagles aren't a DEM. But it is close and had Gwaihir been obliged to pick Gollum up and drop him into the flaming pit after Frodo fell over, the line would have been crossed. But JRRT was too clever for that. The job got done and only then could Gwaihir turn up and save our heroes. Convenient, yes. Contrived, possibly. But not a DEM, surely?

Regards,

Peter

 

[dreir]

Peter, I agree that the eagles do not fit into the original definition of a DEM as per ancient Greek drama, but the 'line' has become blurred over the years. The definition has evolved to encompass a broader scope of plot devices, probably out of gradual misuse as much as anything else. Just look into any online dictionary and you will see what I mean. Some of the current definitions basically say 'a convenient, contrived plot twist'. So, it really can be argued both ways.

- Dreir -

 

[KESpires]

I'm going to say the eagles, if not a flat out DEM, are at least a cheap trick cheating us of the gritty realism the story might have had if Frodo and Sam weren't able to return.

Now, if, say, an eagle had shown up at the counsel in Fellowship and had expressed reservations on being able to rally the other eagles to help, then I'd be much more satisfied. It would make their rescue easier to swallow. "I couldn't get my countrymen to rally behind the cause of men, but I couldn't let you die." Something like that would have made sense and have been set up much earlier.

Them just showing up... I never felt comfortable with that.

Interestingly enough, since we're discussing DEM, does anyone think that time travel stories easily fall into this? If you start dissecting time travel stories they almost always seem to involve characters who are in their "present" getting involved in events that set their "past" up. Not only a paradox, but a DEM as well?

 

[Sapheron]

As people usually time travel in order to change a specific event where the solution they won't wouldn't otherwise happen, I think it's a given a time traveller will end up as a DEM... It's kind of the point of them.

 

[Moss]

In the chapter titled "Dea Ex Machina" in Watership Down, Richard Adams has the rabbit Hazel rescued by humans in a car. From the rabbits' point of view, this really is DEM - an intervention by an inexplicable power from an unknown dimension. From the perspective of the human readers, the intervention is an entertaining and acceptable twist. Adams handles it with a comfortable shift of narrator Point Of View.
I have no problem with Frodo and Sam's rescue. It seems to me an acceptable, explicable, and enjoyably unexpected, intervention. I suspect, long ago when I first read it, I shouted out in delight. In the end, the reader's participation is what makes it. If the reaction is "Wow, that's good", the twist works: "Hey, that's not fair!", the twist is an unacceptable one.