Deus Ex Machina

Definiton
A deus ex machina (literally "god from the machine") is a god brought on the stage by a mechanical device or, by extension, "an improbable contravince in a story characterized by a sudden unexpected solution to a seemingly intractable problem." Neoclassical literary criticism, from Corneille and John Dennis on, took it as a given that one mark of a bad play was the sudden invocation of extraordinary circumstance. Thus, the term "deus ex machina" has come to mean any inferior plot device that expeditiously solves the conflict of a narrative.

Linguistic considerations

The Latin phrase "deus ex machina" comes to English usage from Horace's Ars Poetica, where he instructs poets that they must never resort to a god from the machine to solve their plots. He is referring to the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a mechane(crane) was used to lower actors playing a god or gods onto the stage. The machine referred to in the phrase could be either the crane employed in the task, the calque from the Greek "ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός" apó mēchanēs theós, or a riser that brought a god up from a trap door.

The reason I chose this provocative phrase as a title is the irony it provides in my writings which I have never used be it my first ever essay whilst in the kindergarten years ago or in my professional carrier. However, it is a term of hope and represents hope itself when confronting our everyday situation. Oh how we wish divine intervention occurs when we're short in paying the house loan every month, or hoping to wake up from that horrible "dream" we faced yesterday when s/he broke up with us, or Mrs. White would admit the murder she did with the wrench in the billiard room.

As i sat down and contemplated on this issue, again, I realized our aphoristic deliberations in the manner of thinking, in a simple term of "laziness". We refuse to do much in return for something more, yet forced to do something more in return for something much less than anticipated. Although ultimately, the value of expectations determine the quid pro quo even if they seemed vividly unfair to other people, there are still hopes for the occurrence of a deus ex machina.

Apart from irony, I wish to enunciate that what are hopes for if we do not hope? What are dreams for if we do not dream? And along with those hopes and dreams, we fortify with hard work, the pain in our backs, the sweat from our brows, and the enthusiasms we had when we began foreseeing our future selves.

Praying is never lame. Playing golf in working hours is.



Reference
Wikipedia 2008, "deus ex machina", <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina>, online, accessed on 22nd December 2008.

A Cordial Encounter

Amorphous stratum delirium is much the definition upon the innervation I had in the making of this blog, where I consider it as a verge between my derangement and perspicacity in seeking axioms in dissimulations amidst every morbid humor as an amusement to the betrayal of my psycho-logical sense. A dogma rather than stigma as a belief, that to believe is to perceive, as extensive imagination is used to portray "what is not in front".

As the depiction of the ambiguous human mind, imagination was always misunderstood or even purposely confounded as a child's expressive behavior especially when it gets too high or complicated to apprehend, thus we created a more sophisticated term, "creative thinking" or "thinking outside the box", as a mere veneer of our aphoristic deliberations. As imperfections flawlessly perfect us humans flawless, we deteriorate ourselves even further in some very ingenious ways. For instance, using truths to cover up lies and vice versa.

Welcome to Deus Ex Machina, an irony to reflect my intellectual navigations to the farthest extent, where imaginations become inconceivable, verbiage veers verbose, and where exaggerations exaggerate.