Deus Ex Machina
Imagine that you are watching a Greek play. As the end of the play nears, you begin to see that there is no way for one of the characters to survive. If he chooses life then he must give up all that is dear to him. If he chooses what is dear then he must die. Then from above the stage another character appears, one that we haven’t seen before. With a booming voice he removes the character from the danger he faces. You are left to think, “I didn’t see that coming.” What just happened? This is something that we might call a plot device, if we don’t just call it bad writing. This plot device has the name deus ex machina or if you prefer god on a stick. In some Greek plays the playwrights would put their characters in situations from which they could not recover and then bring them out of it by bringing in a god of some sort, usually via something like a crane from above the stage. This became known as deus ex machina, or “god from a machine.” The ancient Greeks’ belief that their gods cou...