Previous
Foil
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
Part 1: Book 2, Chapter 7: A Seminarist-Careerist
Explanation and Analysis—Foresaw the Crime:
Comments made by the envious Rakitin to Alexei following the disastrous meeting of the Karamazovs with Zosima the elder at the monastery foreshadow later events in the novel. Noting that Zosima bowed his head to the floor in front of Dmitri, an act that appears to be symbolic, Rakitin states that:
A crime in your nice little family. It will take place between your dear brothers and your nice, rich papa. So Father Zosima bumps his forehead on the ground, for the future, just in case. Afterwards they’ll say, ‘Ah, it’s what the holy elder foretold, prophesied,’ though bumping your forehead on the ground isn’t much of a prophecy. No, they’ll say, it was an emblem, an allegory, the devil knows what! They’ll proclaim it, they’ll remember: ‘He foresaw the crime and marked the criminal.’
Here, Rakitin, who is deeply skeptical of Zosima and jealous of Alexei, cynically interprets Zosima’s gesture as an attempt to gain credibility. Zosima, he believes, perceived that Dmitri is volatile and angry using ordinary powers of observation. Further, Rakitin concludes that Zosima hopes to pass off his prediction that Dmitri will attempt to kill his father as a divine prophecy so that others will praise him. Rakitin's comments to Alexei reflect his own lack of faith and foreshadow events to come. Indeed, Fyodor will be murdered by one of his sons, though Dmitri is not the culprit. Zosima’s decision to bow to Dmitri, then, in fact foreshadows the unjust imprisonment of the young man on false charges.
Related Themes:
Part 1: Book 3, Chapter 10: The Two Together
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Mountain:
Dmitri, desperate to prevent Grushenka from accepting his father’s invitation, beats Grigory to gain access to Fyodor’s house and then beats his father before being pulled away by his brothers. After speaking with his father, who threatens Dmitri with legal action, and with Ivan, who responds ambivalently to his concerns, Alexei reflects anxiously upon the future of his family, using a simile and foreshadowing later events in the novel:
One main, fateful, and insoluble question towered over everything like a mountain: how would it end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he himself had been a witness. He himself had been there and had seen them face each other. However, only his brother Dmitri could turn out to be unhappy, completely and terribly unhappy: disaster undoubtedly lay in wait for him.
In a simile, Alexei imagines the “insoluble question” of how this love-triangle will end as being “like a mountain” that “towered over everything.” This simile suggests that this question has overshadowed all of his other concerns. Further, he predicts that his family is heading toward “disaster,” foreshadowing the later murder of Fyodor and subsequent trial of Dmitri. At this point in the novel, Alexei can see that there will be no peaceful resolution to the tensions in his family but does not know how to mitigate the damage.
Part 2: Book 5, Chapter 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar
Explanation and Analysis—Inevitable Catastrophe:
At various points in the novel, Alexei demonstrates an almost prophetic ability to determine future events, and he is particularly worried about his brother, Dmitri. After he leaves the home of Madame Khokhlakov and her daughter, Lise, Alexei’s anxious thoughts foreshadow the “terrible catastrophe” that will profoundly alter the lives of everyone in his family:
A thought flashed in him as he was saying goodbye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him [...] With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his “great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define.
Though he has been pleasurably distracted by his conversation with Lise, to whom he has become hastily engaged, his anxieties catch up with him when he is alone. He wants to return to the monastery to see Zosima the elder, who is close to death, but nevertheless feels a compulsion to find Dmitri, an urge that “outweighed everything” and grew stronger “each hour.” He is, at this point in the novel, tormented by a feeling that “an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur,” though he cannot quite identify its nature. His anxieties here foreshadow the murder of his father, Fyodor, and the false conviction of Dmitri for the murder.
