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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
Part 1: Book 2, Chapter 7: A Seminarist-Careerist
Explanation and Analysis—Foresaw the Crime:
Comments made by the envious Rakitin to Alexei following the disastrous meeting of the Karamazovs with Zosima the elder at the monastery foreshadow later events in the novel. Noting that Zosima bowed his head to the floor in front of Dmitri, an act that appears to be symbolic, Rakitin states that:
A crime in your nice little family. It will take place between your dear brothers and your nice, rich papa. So Father Zosima bumps his forehead on the ground, for the future, just in case. Afterwards they’ll say, ‘Ah, it’s what the holy elder foretold, prophesied,’ though bumping your forehead on the ground isn’t much of a prophecy. No, they’ll say, it was an emblem, an allegory, the devil knows what! They’ll proclaim it, they’ll remember: ‘He foresaw the crime and marked the criminal.’
Related Themes:
Part 1: Book 3, Chapter 10: The Two Together
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Mountain:
Dmitri, desperate to prevent Grushenka from accepting his father’s invitation, beats Grigory to gain access to Fyodor’s house and then beats his father before being pulled away by his brothers. After speaking with his father, who threatens Dmitri with legal action, and with Ivan, who responds ambivalently to his concerns, Alexei reflects anxiously upon the future of his family, using a simile and foreshadowing later events in the novel:
Unlock with LitCharts A+One main, fateful, and insoluble question towered over everything like a mountain: how would it end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he himself had been a witness. He himself had been there and had seen them face each other. However, only his brother Dmitri could turn out to be unhappy, completely and terribly unhappy: disaster undoubtedly lay in wait for him.
Part 2: Book 5, Chapter 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar
Explanation and Analysis—Inevitable Catastrophe:
At various points in the novel, Alexei demonstrates an almost prophetic ability to determine future events, and he is particularly worried about his brother, Dmitri. After he leaves the home of Madame Khokhlakov and her daughter, Lise, Alexei’s anxious thoughts foreshadow the “terrible catastrophe” that will profoundly alter the lives of everyone in his family:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A thought flashed in him as he was saying goodbye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him [...] With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his “great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define.
