Eucatastrophe

A eucatastrophe is a sudden turn of events in a story that ensures the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending doom. Tolkien coined the word in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", based on a 1939 lecture, by affixing the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to catastrophe. Some label it a form of deus ex machina, but Tolkien held it could occur without one; the noted difference is eucatastrophe's inherent connection to an optimistic view on the unfolding of events. His moments: at Mount Doom the One Ring is destroyed through Gollum's waylaying of Frodo, and Bilbo's "eucatastrophic emotion" at the eagles in The Hobbit.

The article calls eucatastrophe a fundamental part of Tolkien's conception of mythopoeia; a devout Catholic, he called the Incarnation the eucatastrophe of human history and the Resurrection the eucatastrophe of the Incarnation. For writers it names the turn readers of fantasy hope was planted rather than summoned: the line against the deus ex machina charge.