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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
Act One
Explanation and Analysis—Resigned Helplessness:
The specifics of Mary's addiction are not made clear in Act One. But throughout the act, the possibility of relapse becomes increasingly clear. This creates a frightening instance of foreshadowing that only deepens as the play progresses.
First, Mary starts to turn on Edmund after she learns that he was himself awake while Mary was checking to see if she could hear him coughing during the night. Much is made throughout the play of spying on one another during through doorways; though O'Neill always places this action offstage, upstairs. This increases the tension, as the reader (or the viewer of the play) does not get to see the characters when they go upstairs.
Just after, Mary blames Edmund for obliquely bringing up her addiction, which Mary rejects out of hand: "I won't listen when you're so silly!" But then with "her bitterness receding into a resigned helplessness," Mary openly muses about relapsing: "How can you help it?" And with a "quick, strange, calculating, almost sly glance at him," she says she's off upstairs to take a nap. O'Neill's stage directions make it quite clear that Mary is thinking about relapsing: it doesn't take a detective to guess that Mary is lying to Edmund and has become "helpless" against her desire to take morphine again. If performed by a talented actor, this part of the play can be deeply unsettling to a viewer. Mary is saying that she would not relapse, and acting another way; the image of the woman, torn between her desire to keep appearances with her family and her tortured mental state, is depressing and, at times, terrifying. In the scene, there is no explicit mention of drugs or of the fact that anyone has ever used them. But Act One builds a sense of foreboding and tension through the consistent allusion to the problem, without mentioning it.
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