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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—Electrocution :
In the famous opening lines of The Bell Jar, the narrator foreshadows her later experiences with electroshock therapy in a psychiatric clinic by reflecting upon the execution, by electrocution, of the Rosenbergs, a married couple who were controversially charged with espionage by the government of the United States in 1951:
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read about in the papers—goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.
I thought it must be the worst thing in the world.
At first glance, the narrator’s decision to mark the events of the novel by alluding to the execution of the Rosenbergs seems an odd one. She does not know the Rosenbergs, nor do they appear directly in the story. She fixates in particular on the nature of their death by electrocution, noting that it makes her feel “sick,” wondering what it must be like to be “burned alive all along your nerves” and concluding that it must be “the worst thing in the world.”
These opening lines, then, foreshadow Esther’s later experiences with electrocution as a patient who undergoes electroshock therapy after a suicide attempt, an experience that she finds painful and stressful at first. At the end of the novel, however, Esther receives treatment from the sympathetic Dr. Nolan, a female psychiatrist who gains Esther’s trust and helps her overcome her fear of electroshock therapy.
