Chapter Twenty-Seven: Chekhov's Gun and the Great Attractor

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chekhov’s Gun and the Great Attractor

In the dramatic and literary arts there exists the concept of Chekhov’s Gun.  The heart of this concept is simple:  if you introduce a gun in a story, someone must use it before the end of the story.  This really applies to every character, trope, McGuffin, prop, or idea introduced.

Chekhov’s Gun is mirrored in the real world by the concept of the Great Attractor.  This idea is based on the mysterious quantum phenomena of Strange Attractors, which seem to direct the outcome of quantum events.  The Great Attractor is a sort of universal, teleological entity that pulls the universe towards a certain outcome.  Teleology makes physicists nervous, or course, harboring as it may by connotations, if not implications of intent inherent in creation, i.e. it seems to imply a creator.  Nonetheless, it’s a fun idea.  The concept of something, beyond all our imaginations, pulling history towards some intended outcome.

Viewed in this way, everything we encounter in our lives, is like Chekhov’s Gun, set there by some entity, outside our reality, to steer us towards the future, to us, nebulous, foreboding, hopeful, and unknown, but truly, a narrative necessity driving us along the plot to reach planned outcome at the climax of the story.

This idea terrifies me.

(c) Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt