Deus Ex Machina in the HP series, Conceivable or Inconceivable, That is the Question |
 Aug 1 2008, 05:47 PM
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Grand Pooh-Bah of the Poking Sticks Emporium  Posts: 7,181 Joined: 3:53pm January 4, 2008 Location: Fine-tuning her Spambot Magnet    |
A very interesting discussion was born in the Carry on Camping thread brought forth by SarahW:
QUOTE(SarahW @ Aug 19 2008, 04:02 PM)  The issue with the Deluminator, is that for 6.5 books it was a device to remove light. Then, suddenly, it developed the ability to detect the location of lost friends and also teleport the owner to them. I try to avoid the phrase, but lots of critics think of it as the worst type of Deus Ex-Machina. Starlesswinter posted the following: QUOTE(starlesswinter @ Aug 19 2008, 06:23 PM) Oh, and the deluminator thing...it IS a deux machina, in my opinion, because its other abilities were not even hinted at before. When Jo foreshadows in that awesome subtle way she has, you can tell it was planned. But things in Deathly Hallows such as the Deluminator, each of the Hallows, the flesh memory Snitch (which I can't seem to find in Quidditch Through the Ages, hm...): these weren't hinted at whatsoever, and I don't buy that they were planned. And davidenglish the following: QUOTE(davidenglish @ Aug 20 2008, 11:34 AM) I don't see any of the gifts given in Dumbledore's Will as Deus ex machina. Indeed, the gifts parallel the Deathly Hallows. The Trio are on a winding road and have escaped certain death and so Death (Dumbledore) gives them three gifts: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The Deluminator, and the special Snitch. According to wikipedia deus ex machina is defined as follows: QUOTE It is an improbable contrivance in a story characterized by a sudden unexpected solution to a seemingly intractable problem. The term "deus ex machina" came to mean any inferior plot device that expeditiously solves the conflict of a narrative. Several posters have discussed in insightful detail that many of the plot lines unearthed in DH were a bit unbelievable and were contrived by Rowling at the last minute. In addition, some feel that the things that we learn are improbable and we as readers were never given any hints in previous books in the series.Others feel that Rowling did a brilliant job in interweaving her complex plot, and we learned everything we needed to know, as it was planned and Rowling succeeded in making her plot believable and enough plausible hints were given to the readers. So, let's discuss deus ex machina as a plot device in the series, its pros and cons and remember to give canon evidence to support your theories  I would like to thank SarahW, starlesswinter, davidenglish, roonwit and all of those posters who have contributed to the discussions so far and who have inspired this thread 
This post has been edited by lirene: Aug 23 2008, 12:33 AM --------------------  |
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