什么是机械降神？ #21 定义与示例-视频文稿

LICENSE: CC BY

By John Larison, Oregon State Senior Instructor and Popular Novelist

MLA Citation: Larison, John. "What is Deus Ex Machina?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 23 Aug. 2020, Oregon State University, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-deus-ex-machina. Accessed [2025-6-30].

Imagine. You’ve been working for years to prepare a college application worthy of the Ivy League. You’ve gotten straight A’s in all the hardest classes, completed hundreds of hours of community service, smoked those standardized tests, even made the varsity basketball team three years running. And then just as you’re about to mail your college application, your phone rings. It’s the admissions office at Harvard. They say don’t bother filling out an application at all. You’ve been accepted. Congratulations, you start this August.

试想一下，你多年来一直在努力准备一份足以被常春藤盟校录取的大学申请材料。你所有最难的课程都拿到了全A，完成了数百小时的社区服务，轻松通过了那些标准化考试，甚至还连续三年入选校篮球队。而就在你正要寄出大学申请表时，电话铃响了。是哈佛招生办。对方说根本不用填申请表了，你已经被录取。恭喜，今年八月入学。

Now on one hand, you’d be happy. You’re going to your dream school. But on the other hand, you might feel a little let down, right? I mean, you’ve done all this hard work, you’ve given up hanging out with friends for extra study time. Maybe you’ve never really liked basketball in the first place. After all the sacrifices you’ve made, you kind of wanted to see you if you could earn that spot at Harvard.

一方面，你会感到高兴。你即将进入自己梦想中的学校。但另一方面，你可能会有点失落，对吧？你付出了这么多努力，为了额外的学习时间放弃与朋友相处。也许你一开始就不是真的喜欢篮球。你做出了这么多的牺牲，本希望能够凭借自己的努力赢得进入哈佛的机会。

Stories like this one don’t happen in real life. But this hypothetical scenario might help you understand the plot device called Deus Ex Machina.

这种情节在现实中不会发生，但这个假设场景能帮你理解“机械降神”这个叙事手法。

Deus Ex Machina is Latin for “God from the machine,” and the device has been around since the time of Greek theater. The ancient playwright Euripides popularized the technique. His tragedies placed characters in these confounding situations; they strove to resolve their conflicts only to be saved from defeat at the last moment by an early form of special effect. See, Euripides enjoyed delivering gods to the stage with the help of a machine kind of like a crane. Hence the name, Deus Ex Machina.

“机械降神”来源于拉丁语，这种装置自希腊戏剧时代就已存在。古希腊剧作家欧里庇得斯使这一技巧流行起来。他的悲剧作品常常把人物置于令人困惑的境地；他们努力解决冲突，却在最后一刻被一种早期的特效形式所拯救。欧里庇得斯热衷于借助类似起重机的机器，把神明送到舞台上。因此得名“Deus Ex Machina”。

This plot device has been used ever since by writers struggling to find an ending to their story. You might have seen it in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies about children stranded on an island who are rescued by a naval officer who happens to be passing the island. Charles Dickens used it in Oliver Twist, Tolkien did too in Lord of the Rings. Even Shakespeare was known to rely on the technique from time to time. And when Deus Ex Machina is used, readers almost always feel—meh—a little let down.

自那以后，这种叙事手法一直被那些为故事寻找结局的作家所使用。你可能在威廉·戈尔丁的小说《蝇王》中见过这种手法，小说中被困荒岛的孩子被一名路过的海军军官解救。查尔斯·狄更斯在《雾都孤儿》中也使用过这种手法，托尔金在《指环王》中同样如此。甚至莎士比亚也时不时地依赖这种技巧。当“机械降神”被使用时，读者几乎总是会觉得——呃——有点失望。

Here’s why:

Any story—ancient or contemporary—is built from just a few key ingredients. We have a setting, the reality in which the story occurs. We have our protagonist, who is the leading character, the star. And we have the problem that protagonist is trying to resolve. The plot of any story is built from the actions that protagonist takes to resolve the problem.

原因如下：

无论古今，所有故事都由几个核心要素构成：首先是故事发生的背景，即叙事空间；然后是主角，也就是故事的核心人物；最后是主角试图解决的问题。任何故事的情节都是由主角为了解决问题所采取的行动构成的。

The most satisfying stories—believe it or not--tend to be those in which the protagonist struggles. We see the character encountering obstacles, trying to overcome them, failing at first and then—we hope!—succeeding. One obstacle leads to another and to another, and in the story’s climax, the protagonist faces the most demanding obstacle of all. By this magical moment in a story, we the audience are on the edge of our seats; we’re rooting for the protagonist; we so hope our hero is up to the challenge.

最令人满意的故事，信不信由你，往往是那些主角奋斗的故事。我们看到角色遇到障碍，试图克服它们，起初失败，然后——我们希望！——成功。一个障碍引出下一个，直到故事的高潮部分，主角必须直面最严峻的挑战。在故事的这个神奇时刻，此刻作为观众的我们屏息凝神，为主角摇旗呐喊，殷切期盼我们的英雄能经受住终极考验。

Deus Ex Machina steals our joy. Rather than getting to watch our hero overcome that most demanding obstacle of all--Voldemort or the Dark Side-- we watch as our hero is rescued by some outside force. Our hero turns out never to have been the hero at all, only a victim needing help. Imagine if Harry Potter, in book seven, forgot how to lob spells and was rescued from certain death by Queen Elizabeth.

而“机械降神”却摧毁了这种快感。我们期待的，是看着英雄正面战胜某种艰巨的障碍，比如伏地魔或黑暗势力。结果却目睹主角被某种外部力量拯救——这让我们突然意识到，主角从来都不是真正的英雄，只是个等待救援的受害者。试想《哈利波特》第七部，如果哈利忘记施咒，最终由伊丽莎白女王从必死之局中救出他会怎样……

Now, the force that rescues the protagonist?—it doesn’t have to be a god…or a queen. But it does have to come from outside the story’s immediate setting. Remember Lord of the Flies. For the whole book, we’ve been on the island with these stranded children as they struggle to stay alive: spearing pigs, organizing rival factions, avoiding cold-hearted murder. In the end, our hero is about to be slayed by his former classmates. He’s helpless on the beach. But rather than save himself, he is saved by a character we’ve never seen before, a naval officer—someone from outside the setting of the island—who happens upon this specific beach in just that lucky moment.

现在，拯救主角的力量？不一定是神…或女王。但它确实必须来自故事的直接背景之外。还记得《蝇王》吗？在整本书中，我们一直和这些被困在岛上的孩子们在一起，看着他们为了生存而挣扎：猎杀野猪，组织敌对派系，避免冷酷的谋杀。最后，我们的英雄即将被他以前的同学杀死，他在海滩上无助。但他没有自救，而是被一个我们从未见过的角色——一位海军军官——拯救了，这个人来自岛外的环境，恰好在那个幸运的时刻偶然来到这个特定的海滩。

In real life, maybe you’d prefer to have your dream college call and accept you even before you’ve applied. But in fiction, we hope our hero is up the task of solving her own problems.

在现实生活中，或许你更希望在申请之前，梦想中的大学就直接打电话来录取你。但在小说中，我们希望我们的英雄能够胜任解决自己问题的任务。