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Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Great Hand:
In the following example of foreshadowing, Marie-Laure imagines the descent of the German army on Paris as a giant hand, closing in around herself and her city:
Those last nights in Paris, walking home with her father at midnight, the huge book clasped
against her chest, Marie-Laure thinks she can sense a shiver beneath the air, in the pauses between the chirring of the insects, like the spider cracks of ice when too much weight is set upon it. As if all this time the city has been no more than a scale model built by her father and the shadow of a great hand has fallen over it.
In the days before the Germans bomb Paris, Marie-Laure feels an impending sense of doom. Nature itself feels ill-at-ease, as though an unnatural hand (symbolizing the German army) might descend from the sky to crush Paris. Curiously, this example of imagery told from Marie-Laure's perspective aligns with how she imagines the world, through the lens of her city models. She envisions a threat as a hand descending from the sky, much like her own hand might descend onto the models she uses to imagine and navigate her world. Marie-Laure imagines the appearance of threats in Paris along the preexisting axes of her imagination, the basis of which she formed with her hands, models, and mind.
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