Foreshadowing Definition, Types & Examples
Table of Contents
ShowWhat is the definition of foreshadowing?
Foreshadowing refers to when an author gives clues as to what might happen in the future. Foreshadowing can be direct where the reader is clearly told what will happen or indirect where the future is alluded to.
Why would an author use foreshadowing in a story?
There are many reasons why an author might use foreshadowing. One reason is to create suspense. An author wants a reader to keep reading, and foreshadowing can help do this. Another reason is that it makes writing more interesting as the reader will want to know if what is foreshadowed will actually occur.
What is an example of foreshadowing in a sentence?
''Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--''
This sentence from ''The Raven'' contains foreshadowing as midnight makes the reader think something eerie might happen.
Table of Contents
ShowWhat is foreshadowing? In short, foreshadowing is a literary device whereby an author drops hints, either explicit or implicit, regarding what is to happen in the future. An author may use foreshadowing to create suspense or build narrative tension. Because of this, foreshadowing may often be seen at the end of a chapter to entice the reader to move on to the next one with haste. That is not to say that it is always used for that purpose or in that location in a work; it is just one of the more obvious ways it is used.
Authors can use an almost seemingly endless list of elements to create foreshadowing. Some are used commonly enough, however, to note them. These include the following:
- Objects
- Colors
- Dialogue
- Weather
- Time of day
- Season
- Prophecies or omens
- Symbols
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While many different plot elements can create foreshadowing, there are two main types of foreshadowing. These are indirect and direct foreshadowing. Both can be used in the same piece of writing.
Indirect Foreshadowing
Indirect foreshadowing , also referred to as subtle foreshadowing, refers to foreshadowing that does not explicitly tell the reader what will happen. Many modern-day readers do not want to know how a story will end, so they prefer the more nuanced indirect foreshadowing. Examples of indirect foreshadowing include:
''The Raven'' by Edgar Allen Poe
''Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ’tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.’''
Here, Poe uses the time of day in foreshadowing. Midnight is often thought of as the quintessential ''dead of night,'' when anything spooky can happen. He also uses dialogue to set up foreshadowing although the dialogue is just words spoken by the narrator to the narrator. ''Only this, and nothing more.'' The scene that was previously set contradicts the words spoken, thus creating suspense and foreshadowing.
The Empire Strikes Back
Indirect foreshadowing happens in this film when Luke sees the face of Darth Vader behind his mask. Luke thinks it is his own, foreshadowing that Darth Vader is, in fact, Luke's father.
Direct Foreshadowing
In direct foreshadowing, the author more clearly implies what will happen. One way an author might do this is by depicting a wedding scene. The author might then flash back to when the couple met, and the rest of the story may proceed from this earlier date. This is direct foreshadowing because the author specifically shows the reader what will happen. Other literary examples include:
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
''Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;''
In this example, Shakespeare uses the phrase, ''fatal loins,'' an explicit note that they who took their life from these fatal loins will end up in death.
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The author uses prophecies in Oedipus Rex to predict what will happen. In this instance, a prophet tells Jacosta that her son will kill his father, Laius. To prevent, this Jacosta and Laius leave their baby on the side of the mountain. That baby, Oedipus, survives and does, in fact, end up killing the man he did not know was his father.
Red Herrings
Sometimes authors seem to foreshadow something that will happen, but it does not actually come to fruition. This literary technique using misleading clues is referred to as a red herring.
The Harry Potter series contains a red herring in the character of Severus Snape. Throughout the series, Snape is presented as Harry's nemesis, but in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows author, J.K. Rowling, reveals Snape to be Harry's protector.
Chekhov's Gun
Chekhov's Gun refers to words author, Anton Chekhov, wrote about literature. He said, ''Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it';s not going to be fired, it shouldn';t be hanging there.''
If a writer follows this advice, the reader can know that every single thing that is presented in a story means something. A gun, therefore, is never merely decoration, and weather is never merely background.
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Foreshadowing as a literary device has been used in well-known literary works throughout history. It can make a story more enjoyable because it piques the reader's interest and makes them invested in what will happen. Some additional well-known examples of foreshadowing in literature include:
''A Good Man Is Hard to Find'' by Flannery O’Connor
In this Southern Gothic short story, the grandmother, at the beginning of the story, reads to her family from the paper about a notorious murderer named the Misfit. This is very direct foreshadowing as the family does, indeed, meet the Misfit on the road and he says, ''it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me,'' before killing them all.
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The protagonist in this novel, Isabel Archer, lives in a home that consists of two houses connected by a passageway. After Archer's father dies, she decides to stay in the most dreary room. This symbolic foreshadowing occurs before she ends up trapped in a loveless marriage.
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Foreshadowing is a literary device whereby an author drops hints, either explicit or implicit, as to what is going to happen further along in the story. An author may use foreshadowing to create suspense or build narrative tension. There are two main types of foreshadowing: direct and indirect. In direct foreshadowing, the author may explicitly state what will happen in the future. For example, a writer might describe a couple getting married, then flash back to the beginning of their relationship. In indirect foreshadowing, also referred to as subtle foreshadowing, the predictions are not always as clear and sometimes may only be discernible after the reader finishes the work and knows what will happen. An example of this could be dark and stormy weather making a reader predict something bad might happen. Colors can also be used in foreshadowing. Readers sometimes enjoy this foreshadowing and going back to piece together the clues. Foreshadowing is often used to increase suspense or advance the plot.
Sometimes foreshadowing is not what it seems, however. This can be the case in a red herring where a writer purposefully plans misleading clues. Sometimes a writer does this to throw the reader off from finding clues in a murder mystery. Readers can take note of Chekhov';s Gun. Writer, Anton Chekhov, once wrote that everything that happens in a written work needs to have meaning. Otherwise, it should be discarded. With this principle in mind, a reader can assume that every detail included is available for interpretation as a possible piece of foreshadowing.
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Video Transcript
What is Foreshadowing?
My mom and I like to predict what is going to happen next when we watch a movie or TV show. We like to think our accuracy rate means we should be writing for our favorite television programs, but really, we're just good at reading the clues the writers have left about who committed the murder, or how the two protagonists will eventually meet up so they can fall in love.
In literature, foreshadowing is a literary device authors use to hint toward future events in the story. This can be helpful to the writer when she crafts her story to build suspense, to develop the plot and to add nuance. For example, if the murderer ends up being a character we were never introduced to, then the reader can feel unsatisfied or even confused.
Conversely, foreshadowing can also be used to throw us off the murderer's scent, so to speak, with deliberately placed clues called red herrings. For example, a red herring might make us think the husband did it, when it was really the wife the whole time. Foreshadowing can be as subtle as a seemingly-chance encounter, or as direct as the author giving away the ending in the beginning. Either way, readers can go back and look for how foreshadowing is used as part of the storytelling process.
Direct Foreshadowing
In classic works, it was not uncommon for the story to begin with the author or playwright giving away the ending. Shakespeare must not have believed in trying to keep his audience from spoilers. Otherwise, he wouldn't have started his famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet with the following lines:
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Shakespeare doesn't just hint that things will not work out well for Romeo and Juliet; he totally gives it away. It's okay, though, because you would be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't already know the ending to Romeo and Juliet. While today we wouldn't necessarily want to be told how exactly a book or play ends at its outset, some authors use 'flash-forwards', where readers are given a scene that takes place way in the future, and then are sent back to an earlier date to see how it all unfolds. These flash-forwards can also contain red herrings though, where these scenes are not what they seem at first.
Another way authors have used this more direct style of foreshadowing is by using prophecies or omens, where another character formally predicts what will happen in the future. The Ancient Greeks were all about consulting oracles to find out their fates. In Sophocles' Oedipus plays, Jocasta seeks out a prophecy for her newborn son, Oedipus. The prophet predicts that her son will kill his own father, Laius, and in order to prevent that, they leave baby Oedipus on the side of a mountain.
But, as any good student of Greek tragedies knows, baby Oedipus finds his way off the mountain, grows up and ends up murdering his dad on the road, anyway. (And marrying his own mom, but that is a different lesson.)
Subtle Foreshadowing
In contemporary works, foreshadowing is more subtle and nuanced. In Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery,' first published in 1948, foreshadowing is present in the smallest of details: the looks people give one another, how men hold small slips of paper. These details make sense when you first read the story, but take on added meaning when you read it a second or third time. It helps to know that it is not clear until the very end of the story that 'the lottery' the villagers have gathered for is not to give out money, but to decide who will be killed in the town's annual stoning ritual.
So when you first read how, Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones, it seems like a harmless thing for boys to do, to collect stones. Read in light of the ending, we know the boys aren't innocently collecting stones, but gathering them to kill a neighbor.
The stones gathered in the boys' pockets are an example of what is sometimes referred to as Chekhov's Gun. Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright who believed that each element added to a story should be meaningful. Chekhov wrote, Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
Even more subtle is the use of symbolic foreshadowing, when events, objects or even colors hint at what is in store for a character. Sometimes it can be a small detail that only English professors know is there. For example, a main character's name might have a deeply significant meaning in Greek or Latin that fits in with what eventually happens to her.
Or, as with the protagonist Isabel Archer in Henry James' 'The Portrait of a Lady,' an early description of a character's childhood home might hint at what is in her future. Isabel grew up in a swanky double house, two houses connected by an arched passageway in Albany, New York. Isabel's father dies at the beginning of the novel and she will soon have lots of choices to make, so the double house symbolically foreshadows her transition from one phase in her life to another. That Isabel chooses to stay in the most dreary of all the rooms in the house, the one that is kept bolted shut, takes on new significance when Isabel is later trapped in a loveless marriage.
Lesson Summary
Foreshadowing is used by authors to give hints, both direct and subtle, about what will eventually happen in a story to build their plots and add dimension to their stories. Authors of classical literature, like Shakespeare and the Ancient Greek playwrights, often told their audiences from the outset how their works would end or used prophecies and omens.
In more modern literature, authors use foreshadowing more subtly. Even more subtle is the use of symbolic foreshadowing, when events, objects or even colors hint at what is in store for a character. Sometimes it can be a small detail that only English professors know is there; for example, a main character's name might have a deeply significant meaning in Greek or Latin that fits in with what eventually happens to her.
Learning Outcome
Once a student has finished this lesson, he or she should be able to define foreshadowing and be able to recognize its use in literary works.
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