Chekhov's gun

Chekhov's gun is a literary technique whereby an apparently irrelevant element is introduced early in the story whose significance becomes clear later in the narrative. The concept is named after Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who mentioned several variants of the concept in letters. Chekhov himself makes use of this principle 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.

The phrase "Chekhov's gun" is often interpreted as a method of foreshadowing, but the concept can also be interpreted as meaning "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story." Failure to observe the rule of "Chekhov's gun" may be cited by critics when discussing plot holes.

Statements of Chekhov's principle of drama

The name Chekhov's gun comes from Anton Chekhov himself^{[citation needed]}, 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 attempts to confess to the crime.^[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]

See also

• MacGuffin
• Plot device
• Plot hole
• Twist ending
• Red herring, the opposite of Chekhov's gun: a plot device that's designed to divert attention

References

1. ^ In 1889, 24-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 (Cambridge University Press) 26 (2): 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 

External links

• More detail from The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library
• Discussion of Chekhov's Gun on One Tree Hill
• TV Tropes: Chekhov's Gun