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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—The Firing Squad:
Throughout the novel, the narrator foreshadows a later incident in which Aureliano Buendía, having served as a rebel leader in a bloody civil war, faces a firing squad. This repetitive foreshadowing begins in the very first lines of the novel:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.
The narrator foreshadows this later event from the opening lines of the book, foregrounding the importance of this later event among the many incidents, both major and minor, detailed in the book as it tells the story of multiple generations of the Buendía family. By beginning the story in this manner, the narrator presents key events in the novel, such as the day that the residents of Macondo are first introduced to ice, as a sort of flashback. Much of the story, then, is presented in the form of memories that run through Aureliano’s mind as he faces death.
Related Themes:
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Unto the Ages:
José Arcadio Buendía uses an idiomatic expression drawn from the Bible in conversation with Melquíades when the latter attempts to solve the prophecies of Nostradamus, which foreshadow later events in the novel:
Melquíades got deeper into his interpretations of Nostradamus. He would stay up until very late, suffocating in his faded velvet vest, scribbling with his tiny sparrow hands, whose rings had lost the glow of former times. One night he thought he had found a prediction of the future of Macondo. It was to be a luminous city with great glass houses where there was no trace remaining of the race of the Buendías. “It’s a mistake,” José Arcadio Buendía thundered. “They won’t be houses of glass but of ice, as I dreamed, and there will always be a Buendía, per omnia secula seculorum.”
As Melquíades works on the puzzling prophecies, he makes a discovery. According to his interpretation of Nostradamus, Macondo will someday be a “luminous city with great glass houses,” but bearing "no trace” of the Buendía family. Here, he foreshadows later events in the novel. Indeed, modernization will later bring glass-and-metal architecture to Macondo, and so too is he correct that the Buendía family line will come to an end.
Convinced that this pessimistic prophecy is in error, José Arcadio Buendía claims that there will always be Buendías in Macondo, “per omnia secula seculorum.” Here, he uses a once-common idiom, a phrase from the Latin Bible which could be translated “unto the ages of ages.” In using this idiomatic expression here, José Arcadio Buendía asserts his belief that the fates of Macondo and the Buendía family are closely tied.
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Prophecy:
With her ability to read the future in her cards, Pilar Ternera often foreshadows later events in the novel. However, her messages are often cryptic and do not lead to the expected results, leading to ironic twists of fate. In the midst of the civil war, for example, Aureliano asks her to predict the future, unreliably foreshadowing an attempt on his life:
[He] asked her to read the future in her cards. “Watch out for your mouth,” was all that Pilar Ternera brought out after spreading and picking up the cards three times. “I don’t know what it means, but the sign is very clear. Watch out for your mouth.” Two days later someone gave an orderly a mug of black coffee and the orderly passed it on to someone else and that one to someone else until, hand to hand, it reached Colonel Aureliano Buendía’s office [...] It had a dose of nux vomica strong enough to kill a horse.
Warning Aureliano to “watch out for [his] mouth,” Pilar acknowledges that she herself does not clearly understand the fortune she has seen in her cards. Usually, her messages are somewhat metaphorical, and here the others assume that the message warns Aureliano to be careful about what he says. Ironically, this prophecy is highly literal, foreshadowing a later attempt to assassinate Aureliano, presumably due to his involvement in the civil war, by poisoning his coffee.
