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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
Explanation and Analysis—Island Rocks:
In Chapter 1, the boys find a rock while exploring the island, and they push it over to watch it fall into the jungle. The passage contains both foreshadowing and personification:
The rock was as large as a small motor car. “Heave!” Sway back and forth, catch the rhythm. “Heave!” Increase the swing of the pendulum, increase, increase, come up and bear against that point of furthest balance—increase—increase—“Heave!” The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest.
Note the personification of the rock, which makes it seem as if it decides to fall: it "loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return," and then "leapt" off the cliff. In the first chapter, nature often seems to work with the boys, and that's the impression this rock personification gives.
This playful moment is much darker in retrospect, though: it functions as foreshadowing for Piggy's death. In chapter 11, Piggy dies when Roger uses a branch to launch a rock toward him.
High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever. Ralph heard the great rock before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked. The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
Notice that Roger has a sense of "delirious abandonment" when he launches the rock. This connection between the childlike playing of earlier chapters and the cruelty of later chapters suggests they are related. Destruction is often fun, especially for children, but it has consequences. In Chapter 1, those consequences are as minimal as the destruction of some forest (and perhaps the death of any animals below), but in Chapter 11, Piggy dies and the conch, that symbol of the boys' attempts to create civilization, is totally destroyed.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Skull-Like:
Early in Chapter 1, Golding uses personification, simile, and foreshadowing to describe Ralph's exploration of the island:
Then he leapt back on the terrace, pulled off his shirt, and stood there among the skull-like coconuts with green shadows from the palms and the forest sliding over his skin.
Although it is a small moment, notice that the coconuts are described as "skull-like." This is an excellent bit of foreshadowing and mood-setting. Readers will see more skulls later in the novel: the pig skull and the parachutist's corpse. The description of the coconuts as skull-like foreshadows the violent events of the novel. Even the natural wildlife of the island is similar to death, and this imagery makes the island creepy even before the reader understands the plot. This is a great example of how Golding sets a pessimistic, dreadful tone throughout the novel.
Note as well that the personified forest is "sliding over" Ralph's skin, as if the woods are alive and trying to touch or absorb him. The boys' savagery can be understood as their absorption into a primitive lifestyle ruled by nature. Golding personifies natural elements such as the forest to emphasize the power of nature, and to make the island seem strange, wild, and autonomous—almost as if it has a mind of its own.
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Forest Fire:
During Chapter 2, after discovering Piggy's glasses can be used to spark a flame, the boys accidentally set a forest fire. The passage makes heavy use of figurative language:
One patch touched a tree trunk and scrambled up like a bright squirrel. The smoke increased, sifted, rolled outwards. The squirrel leapt on the wings of the wind and clung to another standing tree, eating downwards. Beneath the dark canopy of leaves and smoke the fire laid hold on the forest and began to gnaw. Acres of black and yellow smoke rolled steadily toward the sea. […] The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock. They flapped at the first of the trees, and the branches grew a brief foliage of fire. The heart of flame leapt nimbly across the gap between the trees and then went swinging and flaring along the whole row of them.
First the fire is like a squirrel (simile), then it simply is one (metaphor). The flames are all sorts of "wild life": not only squirrels, but also jaguars. These metaphors indicate the fire's speed and ease of spreading. They also provide visceral imagery of the out-of-control fire. For much the same purposes, the fire is personified: the flames "leapt nimbly" and then "went swinging and flaring." Fire "began to gnaw" at the forest. This personification attributes hunger and excited destruction to fire. Just as the boys later become excited to cause destruction, seemingly without pausing to think about the consequences of their actions, so too does the fire here playfully and happily ruin a patch of jungle.
This early forest fire foreshadows the final events of the novel. In chapter 12, Jack's tribe sets fire to part of the forest to try to flush out Ralph.
Now the fire was nearer; those volleying shots were great limbs, trunks even, bursting. The fools! The fools! The fire must be almost at the fruit trees—what would they eat tomorrow?
Ralph hears a sound like "volleying shots," as if the fire is shooting at him, but it's instead the sound of wood splintering because of the fast-burning fire. Remember the playful yet destructive personification of the fire earlier? Now we see the consequences of that kind of "savage" behavior—the fire may kill Ralph today, but Jack and his tribe will have nothing to eat tomorrow. Again, savagery and hotheadedness work against civilization and life.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Frightened of People:
In Chapter 5, the boys hold an assembly to discuss the things they should do to survive on the island, and eventually their discussion turns to rumors of a "beast" on the island—an instance of foreshadowing and irony:
"You don’t really mean that we got to be frightened all the time of nothing? Life,” said Piggy expansively, “is scientific, that’s what it is. In a year or two when the war’s over they’ll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn’t no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn’t no fear, either.” Piggy paused. “Unless—” Ralph moved restlessly. “Unless what?” “Unless we get frightened of people.” A sound, half-laugh, half-jeer, rose among the seated boys.
Piggy repudiates the existence of the beast with his usual confident assertions: he trusts science and other products of the adult world, which have taught him, essentially, that the only thing to fear is fear. Piggy reluctantly adds one more thing they might fear: other people. This is foreshadowing for both the revelation that the "beast" on the mountain is the tangled-up parachuter's corpse, and for the climax of the book, when some of the boys themselves kill Piggy. In retrospect, this scene is highly ironic, especially because the other boys laugh and jeer at Piggy for his prediction. Although his warning turns out to be accurate, he is once again ignored and made the butt of the joke.
"Unless we get frightened of people" is also a remarkably clear statement of the moral of the story. As it turns out, the boys didn't need to fear a literal beast or a corpse. They didn't even need to fear never being rescued, as at least two ships pass by them over the course of the novel. Instead, what they should have feared was themselves—the ecstasy, terror, and innate cruelty that causes them to hunt, torture, and kill each other, as well as ignore their responsibilities in favor of play and instant gratification.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Simon's Prediction:
Simon is a uniquely wise character, and he seems to understand things the other boys don't. In this prescient moment in Chapter 7, containing allusion and foreshadowing, he predicts Ralph's safe return:
“You’ll get back to where you came from.” Simon nodded as he spoke. […] Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon’s face for a clue. “It’s so big, I mean—” Simon nodded. “All the same. You’ll get back all right. I think so, anyway.” Some of the strain had gone from Ralph’s body. He glanced at the sea and then smiled bitterly at Simon. “Got a ship in your pocket?” Simon grinned and shook his head.
Ralph becomes angry with Simon for, as Ralph sees it, offering hope without any proof behind it. But Simon's prediction is foreshadowing: not only does Ralph eventually "get back all right," but Simon does not. By saying "you'll get back" instead of "we'll get back," Simon predicts only Ralph's safe return. Nor does Simon say "you all" or "you and Piggy," since Piggy too dies before he can be rescued.
This is another moment in which Simon seems Christlike. Like Christ (and like powerful figures from other religions), Simon is able to prophesy, even though he will not live to see his prophecy fulfilled. When he hears Simon's prediction, Ralph's bitterness is understandable; but his unwillingness to believe also means that, in this scene, Ralph is not unlike one of Jesus's disciples who doubts or repudiates Jesus during the most difficult moments in the Gospel narratives.
Related Themes:
Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Island Rocks:
In Chapter 1, the boys find a rock while exploring the island, and they push it over to watch it fall into the jungle. The passage contains both foreshadowing and personification:
The rock was as large as a small motor car. “Heave!” Sway back and forth, catch the rhythm. “Heave!” Increase the swing of the pendulum, increase, increase, come up and bear against that point of furthest balance—increase—increase—“Heave!” The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest.
Note the personification of the rock, which makes it seem as if it decides to fall: it "loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return," and then "leapt" off the cliff. In the first chapter, nature often seems to work with the boys, and that's the impression this rock personification gives.
This playful moment is much darker in retrospect, though: it functions as foreshadowing for Piggy's death. In chapter 11, Piggy dies when Roger uses a branch to launch a rock toward him.
High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever. Ralph heard the great rock before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked. The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
Notice that Roger has a sense of "delirious abandonment" when he launches the rock. This connection between the childlike playing of earlier chapters and the cruelty of later chapters suggests they are related. Destruction is often fun, especially for children, but it has consequences. In Chapter 1, those consequences are as minimal as the destruction of some forest (and perhaps the death of any animals below), but in Chapter 11, Piggy dies and the conch, that symbol of the boys' attempts to create civilization, is totally destroyed.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Forest Fire:
During Chapter 2, after discovering Piggy's glasses can be used to spark a flame, the boys accidentally set a forest fire. The passage makes heavy use of figurative language:
One patch touched a tree trunk and scrambled up like a bright squirrel. The smoke increased, sifted, rolled outwards. The squirrel leapt on the wings of the wind and clung to another standing tree, eating downwards. Beneath the dark canopy of leaves and smoke the fire laid hold on the forest and began to gnaw. Acres of black and yellow smoke rolled steadily toward the sea. […] The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock. They flapped at the first of the trees, and the branches grew a brief foliage of fire. The heart of flame leapt nimbly across the gap between the trees and then went swinging and flaring along the whole row of them.
First the fire is like a squirrel (simile), then it simply is one (metaphor). The flames are all sorts of "wild life": not only squirrels, but also jaguars. These metaphors indicate the fire's speed and ease of spreading. They also provide visceral imagery of the out-of-control fire. For much the same purposes, the fire is personified: the flames "leapt nimbly" and then "went swinging and flaring." Fire "began to gnaw" at the forest. This personification attributes hunger and excited destruction to fire. Just as the boys later become excited to cause destruction, seemingly without pausing to think about the consequences of their actions, so too does the fire here playfully and happily ruin a patch of jungle.
This early forest fire foreshadows the final events of the novel. In chapter 12, Jack's tribe sets fire to part of the forest to try to flush out Ralph.
Now the fire was nearer; those volleying shots were great limbs, trunks even, bursting. The fools! The fools! The fire must be almost at the fruit trees—what would they eat tomorrow?
Ralph hears a sound like "volleying shots," as if the fire is shooting at him, but it's instead the sound of wood splintering because of the fast-burning fire. Remember the playful yet destructive personification of the fire earlier? Now we see the consequences of that kind of "savage" behavior—the fire may kill Ralph today, but Jack and his tribe will have nothing to eat tomorrow. Again, savagery and hotheadedness work against civilization and life.
Related Themes:
