Quibble (plot device)

In literature, a quibble is a common plot device, used to fulfill the exact verbal conditions of an agreement in order to avoid the intended meaning. Its most common uses are in legal bargains and, in fantasy, magically enforced ones. John Grant and John Clute, "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy", "Quibbles" p 796 ISBN 0-312-19869-8] Clever and unusual quibbles startle and please readers, but clumsily contrived ones can seem like artificial ways of escaping a fictional problem.

In one of the best known examples, William Shakespeare used a quibble in "The Merchant of Venice". Portia saves Antonio in a court of law by pointing out that the agreement called for a pound of flesh, but no blood, and therefore Shylock can collect only if he sheds no blood.

Common plots

Quibbles are frequently used to thwart wishes. In one of Aesop's fables, Zeus agreed to give the bee a wish; when she asked that her sting be fatal, he agreed, and added that it would be fatal to her.

A pact with the devil commonly contains clauses that allow the devil to quibble over what he grants, and equally commonly, the maker of the pact finds a quibble to escape the bargain.

Heroes and villains

Villains use quibbles to escape the fair consequences of their agreement. Loki, having bet his head with Brokk and lost, forbids Brokk to take any part of his neck, saying he had not bet it; Brokk is able only to sew his lips shut. In "The Pirates of Penzance", Frederick's terms of indenture bind him to the pirates until his twenty-first birthday; the pirates point out that he was born on February 29th and will not have his twenty-first birthday until he is eighty-four, and so compel him to rejoin them.

Heroes and innocent characters may use quibbles to escape injustice or prevent wrong-doing. When the hero of the Child ballad "The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward" is forced to trade places with an impostor and swear never to reveal the truth to anyone, he tells his story to a horse while he knows that the heroine is eavesdropping. Similarly, in the fairy tale "The Goose Girl", the princess pours out her story to an iron stove. [Maria Tatar, "The Annotated Brothers Grimm", p 320 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4] In Piers Anthony's fantasy world, Xanth, the law requires that the king be a magician and forbids ruling queens, but when in "Night Mare" one king after another falls to an invasion's hostile magic and it appears that no more magicians exist to take the throne, the last magician king observes that while the law forbids ruling queens, it nowhere restricts the title of "king" to men, and several sorceresses take the throne to fight the invasion.

Prophecies and spells

Loopholes in prophecies are also sometimes called quibbles: When Croesus was told by the Pythia that going to war with Cyrus the Great would destroy a great empire, the empire was not Cyrus's but Croesus's. In "Macbeth", Macduff was able to kill Macbeth, who was unable to be harmed by anyone of woman born, because Macduff was "from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd" — born via a Caesarean section. In "The Lord of the Rings", despite Glorfindel's prophecy that "not by the hand of man will [the Witch-king of Angmar] fall," the Witch-king is slain by Éowyn, a woman, and Merry, a hobbit.

It may also be used for loopholes in spells: in "Ruddigore", the baronets are cursed to die if they do not commit a horrible crime every day, but failing to commit such a crime is committing suicide, a horrible crime (a realization that brings one of them back to life), and in Terry Pratchett's "Moving Pictures", a book that inflicts terrible fates on any "man" opening it causes mild annoyance to the Librarian, who is in fact an orangutan. In both situations, if a character discovers the quibble, the cleverness has the same effect as when he finds it in a bargain, and even when the character does not, the reader can appreciate the cleverness of the situation.

References