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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
Key Examples in Sing, Unburied, Sing
Chapter 1: Jojo
Explanation and Analysis—Stink of Death:
Jojo is filled with uncontrollable disgust while in the throes of slaughtering a goat with Pop. In this moment, Ward uses foreshadowing through visual and olfactory imagery to show Jojo’s physical and emotional response to the goat’s death:
It's the smell of death, the rot coming from something just alive, something hot with blood and life. I grimace, wanting to make Kayla's stink face, the face she makes when she's angry or impatient; to everyone else, it looks like she's smelled something nasty: her green eyes squinting, her nose a mushroom, her twelve tiny toddler teeth showing through her open mouth. I want to make that face because something about scrunching up my nose and squeezing the smell away might lessen it, might cut off that stink of death.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9: Richie
Explanation and Analysis—Trapped:
In one of the first frightening and dreamlike passages in which he talks about Parchman, Richie discusses how he never truly escaped the prison that killed him. Ward uses allegory and foreshadowing to show how Parchman continues to control Richie long after death:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I didn’t understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? [...] I was trapped, as trapped as I’d been in the room of pines where I woke up. Trapped as I was before the white snake, the black vulture, came for me. Parchman had imprisoned me again. I wandered the new prison, night after night. It was a place bound by cinder blocks and cement.
Related Themes:
