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You see a black cat on your way to take an exam. Surely, it’s an omen! If literature is anything to go by, this certainly means bad luck, and you will fail the exam. Thankfully, real life isn’t structured by a literary mastermind that carefully drops hints of our fates. And what a clichéd example of foreshadowing that would be, too. We like to create stories out of our lives, but a black cat is just a black cat if you pass your exam.
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In literature, however, you’d be right to think that a black cat is bad news. Foreshadowing is a popular literary device used to give an advance hint of what will happen in a story. Well-performed foreshadowing has the power to delight us when the full mystery is uncovered, or it can make a character’s fate all the more tragic.
Foreshadowing is a fictional device, and it is presented either directly or indirectly.
Foreshadowing is a narrative technique that hints at a plot outcome.
The literary critic Gary Saul Morson’s explanation helps us visualise foreshadowing:
An object in our path may cast a shadow backward, so that we reach the shadow before reaching the object casting it (Gary Saul Morson, ‘Sideshadowing and Tempics’, 1998).1
Simply put, foreshadowing functions exactly like a shadow: we catch a glimpse of what is to come but not the full picture.
Fig. 1 - Foreshadowing works like a shadow of the future that can be seen in an earlier part of a text.
There are two main types of foreshadowing, which differ in how subtle the hint is.
In direct foreshadowing, a writer explicitly draws our attention to the foreshadowing. This type can have the effect of directing the reader’s attention away from what will happen to how and why it happens.
The techniques of direct foreshadowing include:
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) by J. K. Rowling, Professor Trelawney makes the following prophecy:
The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant’s aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight … before midnight … the servant … will set out … to rejoin … his master …
(Chapter 16).
At this point in the story, we don’t know that Ron’s pet rat, Scabbers, is actually the servant of whom Trelawney – Peter Pettigrew – in animal form. The prophecy directly foreshadows what will happen, but we keep reading, excited to find out who the servant is and how he will help Voldemort ‘rise again’.
In indirect foreshadowing, the writer subtly hints at future events without drawing attention to the fact that those hints are intended as foreshadowing.
This often means that the reader is unlikely to pick up on the hints until the foreshadowed event takes place, or maybe the hints are so subtle that readers would have to re-read the story to be able to piece everything together.
The techniques of indirect foreshadowing include:
In The Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding, the line ‘After all, we’re not savages’ subtly and ironically foreshadows that the boys will act more and more violent, like ‘savages’, as the novel progresses.
The main purpose of foreshadowing is to engage the reader in a story. Foreshadowing makes a story more well-rounded, creating thematic unity.
Another important purpose of foreshadowing is to add to the mood and meaning of a story.
Foreshadowing affects a story’s mood and pathos:
In The Kite Runner (2003) by Khaled Hosseini, the tragic fate of Hassan is made all the more poignant to the reader with the foreshadowing story of ‘Rostam and Sohrab’. As kids, this is Amir and Hassan’s favourite story. It’s about a warrior who kills his enemy in battle, not knowing that he is his brother. Amir lets Hassan be abused by bullies and distances himself from Hassan out of guilt. Amir only learns that Hassan was his half-brother after he has been killed by the Taliban many years later. The story foreshadows Hassan’s fate and makes it all the more poignant and tragic, creating a heightened feeling of injustice.
Irony: foreshadowing can have an ironic effect if characters foreshadow an event by saying with conviction that such an event is unlikely to happen. This creates an ironic, mocking effect.
As we saw earlier, in The Lord of the Flies, the boys’ arrogance about their civilised English identity is mocked through the irony of the foreshadowing statement, ‘After all, we’re not savages’.
Determinism: some uses of foreshadowing implies the inevitability of fate. This makes it somewhat of a fatalistic device. When something is fatalistic, it carries with it the assumption that the future is already decided and that we can’t escape our fates.
The fates of the two lovers in Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare are heavily foreshadowed throughout:
Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
(Act 3, Scene 5).
Foreshadowing is different from the literary techniques of flashbacks, flashforwards, and red herrings:
A flashforward shows the future, whereas foreshadowing only hints at it.
Famously, in A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, the ‘Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’ visits Scrooge and shows him what his future will actually be like if he doesn’t stop being such a scrooge.
A flashback shows the past.
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Offred’s narrative often flashes back to her life in the US in the 1980s before it became the ‘Republic of Gilead’.
Foreshadowing and red herrings are also two different things. A red herring is when an author misguides his reader with a false hint. A red herring misdirects the reader into thinking something will happen rather than hinting at something that does happen.
However, we may not know whether something is a red herring or foreshadowing until the full plot has been revealed to us.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) by J. K. Rowling, the reader is led to believe that Sirius Black is a deranged villain who’s out to get Harry, only to find out he had been framed and that the real villain was a wizard-turned-pet-rat.
References
1 Gary Saul Morson, ‘Sideshadowing and Tempics’, New Literary History (Autumn 1998).
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How do you identify foreshadowing in literature?
You can identify foreshadowing in literature by paying attention to how the author creates mood and atmosphere, whether characters seem overly confident about the future and any unusual symbols and imagery used.
What is foreshadowing?
Foreshadowing is a hint at a plot outcome in literature, film, television, etc.
What does foreshadowing mean in literary terms?
Foreshadowing is a narrative technique that hints at a plot outcome.
What is an example of a foreshadowing in literature?
A famous example is the foreshadowing of Romeo and Juliet’s tragic fate in Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare: ‘Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb’.
What is the purpose of foreshadowing?
The main purpose of foreshadowing is to engage the reader in a story. Foreshadowing makes a story more well-rounded and creates thematic unity.
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Lily Hulatt is a Digital Content Specialist with over three years of experience in content strategy and curriculum design. She gained her PhD in English Literature from Durham University in 2022, taught in Durham University’s English Studies Department, and has contributed to a number of publications. Lily specialises in English Literature, English Language, History, and Philosophy.
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