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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Bartleby's Death:
In several subtle moments throughout the story, Melville foreshadows Bartleby’s death. For example, when the Lawyer first meets Bartleby, he describes him as “motionless” and “pallid” (or pale and feeble due to ill health). In fact, the Lawyer describes Bartleby as “pallid” five different times over the course of the short narrative. He also uses the word “cadaverous” (or corpse-like) several times, describing Bartleby’s “cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance,” “cadaverous reply,” and “cadaverous triumph.”
In a more overt example of foreshadowing, in the middle of the story the Lawyer describes a haunting vision he has of Bartleby on his death bed:
Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet.
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