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Chekhov's gun

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Chekhov's gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but its significance does not become clear until later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious object that eventually becomes crucial to the plot, but at the time the object is found it does not seem to be important.

Although many people consider the phrase "Chekhov's gun" to be the equivalent of foreshadowing, the statements the author made about it can be more properly interpreted as meaning "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story."

Statements of Chekhov's principle of drama

The name Chekhov's gun comes from Anton Chekhov himself, who stated that any object introduced in a story must be used later on, else it ought not to feature in the first place:

  • "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889.
  • "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." From Gurlyand's Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.’[1]
  • "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." From S. Shchukin, Memoirs (1911)

Repetitive designation

The earliest form of "Chekhov's gun" was repetitive designation. This foreshadowing technique dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which contains "repeated references to some character or object which appears insignificant when first mentioned but which reappears later to intrude suddenly in the narrative".[2]

A notable example is in the tale of "The Three Apples", a murder mystery narrated in the Arabian Nights. At the beginning of the story, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open to see what is inside. The story describes multiple layers of shawls and carpets in great detail until a dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces is revealed underneath it all. He then orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to investigate the crime.[3][4] The shawls and carpets described in the beginning appear to play no part in the story until two men, one young and one old, claiming to be the murderer reveal themselves near the middle of the story. Both men argue and call each other liars as each attempt to claim responsibility for the murder.[5] This continues until the young man proves that he is the murderer by accurately describing the contents of the chest in which the young woman was found, including the multiple layers of shawls and carpets. He then narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the body's discovery at the beginning of the story.[6]

Other examples

An example in which Chekhov himself makes use of this principle is in Uncle Vanya, in which a pistol is introduced early on as a seemingly irrelevant prop and, towards the end of the play, becomes much more important as Uncle Vanya, in a rage, grabs it and tries to commit homicide.[citation needed]

Many examples of the device exist in the television series Babylon 5. For instance, well before the Rangers were acknowledged verbally in the script, extras in the background would occasionally appear dressed in the Ranger costume. Over the course of season one, Delenn constructed what appeared to be modern art, and little more than a useful device for blocking of scenes, but at the conclusion of the season, viewers finally discovered what the sculpture was actually for. Other examples include the Triluminary, the "hole" in Sinclair's mind, Zathras, Morden, the Icarus, the fate of Babylon 4, and the alien healing device. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski was an advocate of the device and mentioned it often on Usenet.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ In 1889, twenty-four-year old Ilia Gurliand noted these words down from Chekhov's conversation: "If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act". Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997, ISBN 0-8050-5747-1, 203. Ernest.J.Simmons says that Chekhov repeated the point later (which may account for the variations). Ernest J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962, ISBN 0-226-75805-2, 190.
  2. ^ Heath, Peter (May 1994), "Reviewed work(s): Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights by David Pinault", International Journal of Middle East Studies, 26 (2), Cambridge University Press: 358-360 [359]
  3. ^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 86–91, ISBN 9004095306
  4. ^ Marzolph, Ulrich (2006), The Arabian Nights Reader, Wayne State University Press, pp. 241–2, ISBN 0814332595
  5. ^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 92–3, ISBN 9004095306
  6. ^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 93–4, ISBN 9004095306
  7. ^ JMS Genie Message on Aug 09 1994
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