MacGuffin

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

Would Spice, in Dune, be a Macguffin? The characters certainly care about the spice, it moves the plat along, but really, the story isn't about Spice but power and control of people (among many other themes).

Probably.

Interesting. I probably never should have used the term McGuffin since most seem to focus on the Hitchcock definition of the term, rather than what I was actually talking about. That's ok. Threads do tend to go where they want to and it's been interesting.

[Quoth]

I think Dune, Fremen and Spice inspired by Arabia/Gulf, Tuaregs, and Big Oil and Gas.

There might even be a crypto-zoology giant sand worm in Mongolia?

[rkomar]

It seems to me that most secondary characters are there to move the story about the protagonists along. I think it might be more interesting to ask if there are any books that don't have such MacGuffin characters in them.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rkomar

It seems to me that most secondary characters are there to move the story about the protagonists along. I think it might be more interesting to ask if there are any books that don't have such MacGuffin characters in them.

Sure. This one struck me as odd since he was one of the few major point of view characters and perhaps a quarter of the book was from his point of view, but yea, I suspect you could identify such a character, though perhaps having a much smaller role, in most works.