Tags
Charles Dickens, Deus Ex Machina, Ernest Hemingway, Ethics, Eucatastrophe, Gandalf, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harry Potter, It's A Wonderful Life, Johnathan Franzen, Literary Criticism, Lord of the Rings, Metaphysics, Milan Kundera, On Fairy Stories, Storytelling, The God Machine, The Hobbit, Tolkien, Virginia Woolf
Seeing as I’ve spent a good deal of time discussing happy endings, contemporary grimness, and the fundamental structural differences between so-called “realistic” storytelling now in vogue and more archetypal (and enduring) story structures, it seems that this discussion, which proposes to get at the fundamental difference between the two kinds of stories, was inevitable. Deus Ex Machina is one of the bugbears of narrative style in this day and age, but Tolkien’s theory of eucatastrophe, which seems comparable, is the basis behind the wildly famous (and compelling) Lord of the Rings as well as The Hobbit (which leaves me with the thin shred of topicality for this discussion). Are these concepts truly the same, and are they indicative of poor writing?
But first, let’s talk context. Not so much because I suspect I need to define these terms, but so we can discuss them in the light I presently see them in.