Deus Ex Machina (Part the First)

Last year (goodness, was it really that long ago?) I wrote a review for 90&9 in which I complained about how the books I was reviewing ended. Both books left me feeling cheated. I won’t spoil the endings in case you want to read them, but suffice it to say that the Elizabeth Berg novel was the worst offender, with the solution to the family’s intractable financial problem arriving out of a shiny Cadillac (hint: think the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll).

Now, I have nothing against Elvis, but in this book he served as a deus ex machina, which literally means “god from the machine.” It refers to the practice, in ancient Greek tragedies, of lowering an actor playing a god onto the stage in a crane (the “machine”) to solve all the mortals’ difficult problems. According to Wikipedia, deus ex machina is used “to describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (e.g., having the protagonist wake up and realize it was all a dream, or an angel suddenly appear to solve all the plot problems of a story that won't resolve itself by the characters). The phrase has been extended to refer to any resolution to a story which does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and is so unlikely it challenges suspension of disbelief; allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, though more palatable, ending.”

No Fair!
It drives me crazy when authors do this. It makes me want to throw the book at the wall (okay, I confess—sometimes I do throw it).

Why? Because it’s taking the easy way out. You as an author “write yourself in a corner” and then think up a way to make it all resolve in a way it NEVER would in reality. It’s an unearned ending. The “it was all a dream” ending has become infamous in cheesy TV shows and will get you mocked in a writing workshop like no other mistake, but there are other ways to use the deus ex machina that might get you published, but will earn you the disgust from exacting readers. I might not like the ending of your book—for example, I may wish it ended more happily, a common issue I have with a lot of bleak contemporary fiction—but if the ending seems to fulfill the entire book’s promise, then I don’t feel betrayed. There’s nothing more satisfying than a whodunit that ends up surprising us and then neatly tying up the ends of the story, but if the author can’t do that without violating what came before, then maybe he or she should go back and read some Shakespeare.

Part the Second coming up later today.