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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
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Making a Break For It :
In a scene that foreshadows the suicides of the Lisbon sisters, Paul Baldino, one of the neighborhood boys, notes that it appears as though the girls are “going to make a break for it”:
It was Paul Baldino who interpreted their actions: “Looks like they’re going to make a break for it,” he said, putting down the binoculars. He made this conclusion with the confident air of someone who had seen relatives disappear to Sicily or South America, and we believed him at once. “Five dollars gets you ten those girls are out of here by the end of the week.”
He was right, though not in the way he intended. The last note, written on the back of a laminated picture of the Virgin, arrived in Chase Buell’s mailbox on June 14. It said simply: “Tomorrow. Midnight. Wait for our signal.”
At this stage in the novel, the neighborhood boys are on high alert as they believe that the girls have been sending them coded signals in order to request help in escaping from their family home. Previously, the girls had appeared “aimless,“ but now they now move with a clear sense of purpose and intentionality. The boys interpret these signs of activity as an indication that the girls are mobilizing to escape from the house, where they have lived as virtual prisoners for over a year. The boys have, however, misinterpreted the girls’ actions. In fact, the girls have put into motion their plan to die by suicide together. Paul’s comment, then is true in a morbid and ironic sense, correctly foreshadowing the sisters’ desire to get away from the family home through death.
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