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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: Paradise Pickles & Preserves
Explanation and Analysis—Around the Coffin:
At the beginning of the story, Rahel describes Sophie Mol's funeral, where she lays in a coffin, beautiful yet wrinkled. The description of Sophie Mol in her coffin foreshadows the manner of her tragic death:
She lay in it in her yellow Crimplene bell-bottoms with her hair in a ribbon and her Made-in-England go-go bag that she loved. Her face was pale and as wrinkled as a dhobi’s thumb from being in water for too long. The congregation gathered around the coffin, and the yellow church swelled like a throat with the sound of sad singing. The priests with curly beards swung pots of frankincense on chains and never smiled at babies the way they did on usual Sundays.
Sophie's Mol's "pale" face is "wrinkled as a dhobi's thumb," a dhobi being a washerman or washerwoman. With a face wrinkled "from being in water too long," Sophie Mol's body foreshadows her own death by drowning. In hindsight, this foreshadowing device is quite obvious, but upon first read it is ambiguous, as with many devices in the novel. Rahel also foreshadows Velutha's death in this scene, imagining him falling from the ceiling and bleeding from his skull. The same scent of old roses appears as in his death scene.
The way that the author reveals the entire story in this opening funeral paragraph is masterful. The reader does not have enough context to understand what is going to happen to Sophie Mol or Velutha. They continue to read with an open mind, unable to pick up on the small references here and there, until everything comes crashing down in the History House on the river.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2: Pappachi’s Moth
Explanation and Analysis—The Terror:
In Chapter 2, the novel offhandedly foreshadows a tragic event called "the Terror," which creates a mood of dread and fear:
Of course that was then. Before the Terror.
In the same chapter, the novel personifies the Terror, explaining how it "took hold of" Vellya Paapen:
When he returned to Ayemenem after his years away from home, Velutha still had about him the same quickness. The sureness. And Vellya Paapen feared for him now more than ever. But this time he held his peace. He said nothing.
At least not until the Terror took hold of him. Not until he saw, night after night, a little boat being rowed across the river. Not until he saw it return at dawn. Not until he saw what his Untouchable son had touched. More than touched.
In Chapter 9, the novel mentions the Terror again, foreshadowing its terrible consequences unknown to the reader:
Three days before the Terror, he [Velutha] had let them paint his nails with red Cutex that Ammu had discarded. That’s the way he was the day History visited them in the back verandah. A carpenter with gaudy nails. The posse of Touchable Policemen had looked at them and laughed.
The novel uses “the Terror” as an overt yet abstract way of foreshadowing the tragic ending to the 1969 plot line. The first time this reference is used in Chapter 2, the tone is foreboding. However, when "the Terror" is referenced again in Chapter 9, the usage is more nonchalant. The life-changing day of tragedy simply becomes a marker of time, demonstrating how “the Terror" decreasingly operates as foreshadowing device. This shift in tone reflects the entire cast's increasing need to bury trauma and memory. The characters, particularly Estha and Rahel, become numb to violence, love, and betrayal in the aftermath of "the Terror." The fragmentary chronology of the novel allows for this nuanced reaction to trauma.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9: Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen, Mrs. Rajagopalan
Explanation and Analysis—The Terror:
In Chapter 2, the novel offhandedly foreshadows a tragic event called "the Terror," which creates a mood of dread and fear:
Of course that was then. Before the Terror.
In the same chapter, the novel personifies the Terror, explaining how it "took hold of" Vellya Paapen:
When he returned to Ayemenem after his years away from home, Velutha still had about him the same quickness. The sureness. And Vellya Paapen feared for him now more than ever. But this time he held his peace. He said nothing.
At least not until the Terror took hold of him. Not until he saw, night after night, a little boat being rowed across the river. Not until he saw it return at dawn. Not until he saw what his Untouchable son had touched. More than touched.
In Chapter 9, the novel mentions the Terror again, foreshadowing its terrible consequences unknown to the reader:
Three days before the Terror, he [Velutha] had let them paint his nails with red Cutex that Ammu had discarded. That’s the way he was the day History visited them in the back verandah. A carpenter with gaudy nails. The posse of Touchable Policemen had looked at them and laughed.
The novel uses “the Terror” as an overt yet abstract way of foreshadowing the tragic ending to the 1969 plot line. The first time this reference is used in Chapter 2, the tone is foreboding. However, when "the Terror" is referenced again in Chapter 9, the usage is more nonchalant. The life-changing day of tragedy simply becomes a marker of time, demonstrating how “the Terror" decreasingly operates as foreshadowing device. This shift in tone reflects the entire cast's increasing need to bury trauma and memory. The characters, particularly Estha and Rahel, become numb to violence, love, and betrayal in the aftermath of "the Terror." The fragmentary chronology of the novel allows for this nuanced reaction to trauma.
Related Themes:
