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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
Book 3, Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Taxes:
After watching his subordinate lose a round of Poker, Kazu takes Solomon out and shows him the ways of the world. “You lost on purpose,” Kazu claims. The pep talk that follows serves at once as a metaphor and as foreshadowing:
‘Okay, tough guy,’ Kazu said. ‘Listen, there is a tax, you know, on success.’
‘Huh?’
‘If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all the people who did worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too. Everybody pays something.’
True to form, the investment banker makes a metaphor about life that centers around taxes. Kazu develops an extended metaphor likening life’s hardships and penalties to a “tax.” No one, according to Solomon’s boss, is exempt: brought down by the masses, the successful must “pay up to all the people who did worse.” But the unfortunate must also pay a “shit tax,” as do the “middle-class people who are scared of their shadows” and pay in “regular quarterly installments with compounding interest.” Rather than contribute to a sense of communal empathy, though, Kazu’s conceit merely sanctions a Darwinian, dog-eats-dog ethos. “Show no mercy to chumps, especially if they don’t deserve it. Make the pussies cry,” he counsels Solomon.
Kazu’s metaphor functions as foreshadowing as well, not least because it comes back to bite. The very success tax that Kazu mentions now lands upon Solomon himself after he finalizes the deal. “I have to let you go. I am so sorry, Solomon,” he tells his subordinate, levying the very “success tax” that he outlined.
Related Themes:
