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Chekhov's Gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but whose 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 of finding the object 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 "don't include any unnecessary elements in a story". So the moral is not "introduce a plot element early if you are going to use it", but "don't introduce the element at all if you are not going to use it". An example can be found in the twin pistols of the title character in Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler, which make an appearance in the first act, but are not used to important effect until the last act.
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Statements of Chekhov's principle of drama
- See also: Three Uses of the Knife
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." Anton 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)
An example in which Chekhov himself makes use of this principle is 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.
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References
- ^ 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.
