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Literary Devices
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—Thoughts About Harrison:
Early on, the story foreshadows Harrison Bergeron’s televised uprising against the government twice. These moments seem like asides at first: passing, easy-to-miss thoughts about Harrison that actually foretell his defiance against absolute equality.
In the first instance, the third-person narrator has just explained the new laws of equality but adds that daily living is not all that different:
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard.
Here, the speaker concludes the explanation of societal equality with the news of Harrison’s imprisonment. While not naming the exact reason he was taken away, the speaker mentions Harrison shortly after the equality laws, implying the two are connected. In mentioning Harrison alongside the equality laws, the story encourages an association in the mind of the reader, foreshadowing Harrison's significance in rebelling against the norms of the society. In addition, George and Hazel’s inability to think deeply about Harrison’s detainment predicts their forgetting of his failed rebellion at the end of the story.
In the second instance of foreshadowing, George and Hazel are talking in their living room about the Handicapper General and what it means to be normal:
"Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" said Hazel. "Right." said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that."
As with the previous moment of foreshadowing, the news of Harrison’s imprisonment follows thoughts about societal equality and the law. Once more, the two are connected: Harrison’s absence continues to be relevant to the workings of equality. And again, this connection between Harrison and the equality laws foreshadows his later reappearance on the television. The sound of the handicap radio that interrupts thoughts about Harrison similarly foreshadows how he will be forgotten by his parents at the story’s end.
Related Themes:
