Foreshadowing

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.

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.

The meaning of foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a fictional device, and it is presented either directly or indirectly.

预示的定义

The literary critic Gary Saul Morson’s explanation helps us visualise foreshadowing:

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.

Types and examples of foreshadowing

There are two main types of foreshadowing, which differ in how subtle the hint is.

Direct (explicit) foreshadowing

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 fromwhatwill happen tohowandwhyit happens.

The techniques of direct foreshadowing include:

• A revelatory statement:anovelmay open with the narrator saying that by the end of the story, a character will die without revealing who, why, or how. A revelatory statement can come from the narrator, for example, in aprologue, or from thedialoguebetween characters in the story.
• Prophecy:this predicts the future, but the reader has to keep reading to find out if and how the prophecy will come true.

Indirect (implicit) foreshadowing

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:

• Pathetic fallacy:在这方面,财富er and the natural world foreshadowplotoutcomes. For example, a thunderstorm may foreshadow an unpleasant event.
• Symbols and metaphors:these work well as indirect foreshadowing techniques because they are, by their very nature, subtle. Symbols and metaphors are abstract forms of indirect foreshadowing.
• Innocuous details and statements: a reader is likely to disregard these in a story that seems to have no hidden meaning on a first reading.

The purpose of foreshadowing

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.

The functions and effects of foreshadowing

Foreshadowing affects a story’s mood and pathos:

• Mood: foreshadowing can create suspense and a sense of foreboding.
• Pathos: foreshadowing can have a strong emotional effect on readers. The poignancy of the foreshadowed event is heightened by the foreshadowing.

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.

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 differences between foreshadowing and related techniques

Foreshadowing is different from the literary techniques of flashbacks, flashforwards, and red herrings:

Aflashforwardshows the future, whereas foreshadowing only hints at it.

Aflashbackshows the past.

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 thatdoeshappen.

References

¹Gary Saul Morson,‘Sideshadowing and Tempics’,New Literary History(Autumn 1998).