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Macguffin

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The Maltese Falcon

In a narrative, a Macguffin is anything that serves to motivate the characters, but it is of little importance to the viewers and could easily be changed for anything else. For example, in a spy movie, a Macguffin could be secret blueprints that the protagonists must obtain. Such blueprints could easily be exchanged for, for example, a diamond, without the story being much different.

A very famous example of Macguffin is the statue that gives its name to the detective novel The Maltese Falcon. Its only real importance to the reader is knowing that the characters in the novel, heroes and villains, want to get hold of the object. In fact, at various times, the characters are unsure whether the statue they have is the real one or a copy.

Not all objects that interest the protagonists of a story are Macguffins. For example, in the fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring, in addition to motivating the plot, has the ability to corrupt anyone who wears it, which is fundamental to the narrative and therefore it is not something that can be easily exchanged for another object without significantly altering the story.