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Deus ex machina facts for kids

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Deus ex machina is the Latin version of an ancient Greek phrase ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός.

The phrase means "the god from the machine". It comes from the theatre of ancient Greece, which had a kind of crane for delivering gods onto the stage on wires.

By extension, the term means a plot device whereby a seemingly overwhelming problem is suddenly solved by means which are arbitrary, and do not follow from the logic of the narrative (story).

For example, in Euripides' play Alcestis, the heroine agrees to give up her own life in order to spare the life of her husband, Admetus. At the end Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and to Admetus. A more frequently cited example is Euripides' Medea in which the deus ex machina is used to convey Medea, who has just committed murder, away from her husband Jason to the safety and civilization of Athens.

Aristotle criticized the device in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play:

"It is obvious that the solutions of plots... should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama—either previous events which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced... There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, they should be outside the tragedy as, for example, in Sophocles' Oedipus.

Books

  • Mastronarde, Donald, 1990. Actors on High: The Skene roof, the Crane and the Gods in Attic Drama. Classical Antiquity, Vol 9, October 1990, pp 247–294. University of California.

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See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Deus ex machina para niños

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