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Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Heights and Depths:
As Clare and Irene argue, the narrative uses foreshadowing to point to the trouble fast approaching for Clare. When Irene tells Clare she shouldn't associate with Black people if she wants to "pass," she feels choked and frustrated by Clare's abrupt refusal:
Her voice was brittle. For into her mind had come a thought, strange and irrelevant, a suspicion, that had surprised and shocked her and driven her to her feet. It was that in spite of her determined selfishness the woman before her was yet capable of heights and depths of feeling that she, Irene Redfield, had never known. Indeed, never cared to know. The thought, the suspicion, was gone as quickly as it had come.
The foreshadowing in this passage suggests impending difficulties for Clare in several ways. Irene's realization that Clare possesses profound emotions ("heights and depths of feeling") that she herself has "never known" or "cared to know" shows just how little she truly knows Clare. Irene has relied on her ability to protect herself through predicting other people’s actions. She believed that she could "handle" Clare’s presence in her life because she understood her completely. Here, she has a premonition that that assumption is disastrously incorrect. It’s fleeting, but the fact that it disappears so quickly also implies that the problem cannot be avoided through Irene’s usual methods of manipulation. Finally, the suddenness with which the thought appears and disappears implies that the problems to come will be as unpredictable and surprising as Clare Kendry is herself.
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