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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 1: The Vanishing
Explanation and Analysis—Gold Tooth:
In Chapter 1, Grann describes the party where Mollie last saw her sister, Anna Brown. He includes a key detail that foreshadows Anna's death and the way her body is identified:
Before they left, Mollie washed Anna’s clothes, gave her some food to eat, and made sure that she’d sobered up enough that Mollie could glimpse her sister as her usual self, bright and charming. They lingered together, sharing a moment of calm and reconciliation. Then Anna said good-bye, a gold filling flashing through her smile.
Grann has not been cagey thus far, so the reader already knows that things will probably take a bad turn for Anna. Her gold filling is a specific enough detail to stick out as something that might be important to remember. Indeed, later on, the tooth helps Anna's family identify her body; between being shot in the head and left out in the elements for a week, Anna is all but unrecognizable by the time her body is recovered. The gold fillings in her mouth help them make the call that yes, this is her.
In addition to foreshadowing Anna's death and the traumatic identification of her body, the gold filling adds a note of tragedy to the scene at Mollie's house. For all Anna's drinking, she seems to really love her family and add joy to their lives. Mollie sees her as "bright and charming," especially when she is sober. In this last moment of togetherness, the filling shows up with Anna's smile once some of the alcohol has worn off, a sign of her underlying personality. Anna's murder transforms this sign into forensic evidence that her life has come to a violent end.
The gold filling also foreshadows the motive behind Anna's murder. She is killed for her headright to the oil under the Osage land. White entrepreneurs see this oil as "black gold," a precious and rare resource that they covet with all their hearts. Anna flashes her gold filling in Ernest Burkhart's house, and he later turns out to be a conspirator in the spree of murders that starts with Anna. It is almost as though Anna's gold filling tempts Burkhart at last into murder: he sees gold in her smile and decides that her life is worth ending if it helps him tap into "black gold."
Related Themes:
Chapter 6: Million Dollar Elm
Explanation and Analysis—Too Rich:
In Chapter 6, Grann describes the intense auctions for oil leases on Osage land during the 1920s. One white reporter's comment on the influx of wealth into the Osage tribe contains a fallacy that foreshadows the many gruesome deaths to come:
A reporter from Harper’s Monthly Magazine wrote, “Where will it end? Every time a new well is drilled the Indians are that much richer.” The reporter added, “The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.”
The reporter argues that "something will have to be done" about the rising socioeconomic status of the Osage. This claim does not build on actual logic put forth by the reporter, but rather on the white reporter's (and his intended audience's) sense of anger and envy. It follows an over-the-top description of how the Osage are displaying their new wealth—wealth that most of the white readers cannot access. The idea of a sudden and rapid rise from rags to riches is the ultimate American dream that has historically been reserved for mostly white Americans. The journalist shows white readers that the Osage are enjoying a dream that they implicitly think is supposed to belong to white Americans too, if not to white Americans exclusively. The journalist claims that "something will have to be done about" the Osage's new wealth not because wealth itself is a demonstrable problem, but rather because he doesn't like how wealth in the hands of American Indians threatens the social hierarchy.
The reporter's comment foreshadows the way, over the next several years, supposed allies of the Osage will murder their own family members to get rich. This particular reporter works for Harper's Monthly Magazine, a traditionally progressive publication that ran abolitionist content during the Civil War. The fact that even a magazine like this would depict the Osage as undeserving social climbers hints at the bitterness that has tainted even familial relationships between the Osage and their white neighbors.
Related Themes:
