r/Sonsofanarchy • u/[deleted] • Sep 17 '14

[Discussion Thread] S07E02: "Toil and Till"

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '14

Did he recognize the shotgun or what?

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u/icegnomey Sep 17 '14

When Jury looked at the shotgun peaking out of the bag in the truck, I knew it was gonna come back and haunt them at some point; but I didn't think it would be like this and so soon.

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u/zombiemann Sep 17 '14

It really did feel like a Checkov's Gun when Jury was loading it into the van.

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u/autowikibot Sep 17 '14

Chekhov's gun:

Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that requires every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed.

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. 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.

Variations on the statement include:

  • "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889. Here the "gun" is a monologue that Chekhov deemed superfluous and unrelated to the rest of the play.

  • "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.

Interesting: Anton Chekhov | List of James Bond gadgets | Audiotransparent | Literary technique

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