I need people to know this!
It’s a MacGuffin!!!
A MacGuffin, according to @merriamwebster is
“something (as an object) in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.”
So let’s talk about Alice Law ostensibly going to Hell for a recommendation letter. Is it a MacGuffin?
Let’s start with the third sentence of the book:
“It was a terrible gruesome accident that killed Professor Jacob Grimes, and from a certain point of view it was her fault, and so for reasons of both moral obligation and self-interest-for without Professor Grimes she had no committee chair, and without a committee chair she could not defend her dissertation, graduate, or apply successfully for a tenure-track job in analytic magick-Alice found it necessary to beg for his life back from King Yama the Merciful, Ruler of the Underworld.
- Katabasis Chapter 1, page 1
I feel confident that the whole “Alice goes to Hell for a degree and tenure-track job” is a classic example of a MacGuffin plot device.
Especially because the narrator sort of gives us the MacGuffin proof outright in the text of Katabasis. Look at what Alice says below (what she says right afterward is very important but I’m not including because it’s an extreme spoiler):
“But it had never been about the recommendation letters.”
- Katabasis, Chapter 21, page 330
What do you think? MacGuffin or no?
ID: three infographics with purple backgrounds and white text explaining that there is a MacGuffin plot device in Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. All information is included in the caption above.
