Foreshadowing

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2011)

Foreshadowing or adumbrating is a literary device in which an author indistinctly suggests certain plot developments that will come later in the story.

Flashforward and red-herring

Telegraphing

A technique often compared to foreshadowing as a way to reveal incoming plot and make the listener to form expectations^[1] is called telegraphing.^[2]

Telegraphing, in the creation or performance of creative works, is the undercutting of suspense by advanced disclosure or extreme hinting of an element in a composition, narrative plot, or recitation.^[3] A familiar example is stand-up comic and comedy films "telegraphing" the punch line of a joke.^[4] This meaning for the term was coined shortly after the invention of the telegraph.^[3]

In music and the visual arts, such techniques are respected as means of preparing the audience by "building up" to the foreseeable result, as musical overtures usually do. In literature telegraphing is generally seen as lessening the final effect by approaching it too gradually, and thus as a failure of literary technique.

Foreshadowing is subtle and not necessarily reveals that the introduced element will play a role later, while telegraphing allows spectators to guess how the plot will develop^[5] in a way that removes interest in the story.^[6]

Prophecy and omens

Foreshadowing can be carried out by characters predicting the future.^[7] This may range from a woman predicting that her son will come to a bad end if he continues on his way, to a character with the explicit ability to foresee the future prophesizing an event. Similarly, omens, such as breaking a mirror, can be used to foreshadow bad luck. Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, observed that such use of omens and foretelling are plot devices, independent of actual belief in foretelling for both writer and audience.^[8] Such predictions can, like other hints, act as red herrings; even explicit foretelling may, by a quibble, come true in an unexpected manner.

The earliest example of foreshadowing is the self-fulfilling prophecy, a prophecy that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. An early example appears in classical Sanskrit literature. In the story of Krishna in the Indian epic Mahabharata, the ruler of the Mathura kingdom, Kansa (also referred to as Kamsa), afraid of a prophecy that predicted his death at the hands of his sister Devaki's son, had her cast into prison where he planned to kill all of her children at birth. After killing the first six children, and Devaki's apparent miscarriage of the seventh, Krishna (the eighth son) was born. As his life was in danger he was smuggled out to be raised by his foster parents Yashoda and Nanda in the village of Gokul. Years later, Kansa learnt about the child's escape and kept sending various demons to put an end to him. The demons were defeated at the hands of Krishna and his brother Balarama. Krishna as a young man returned to Mathura to overthrow his uncle, and Kansa was eventually killed by his nephew Krishna. It was due to Kansa's attempts to prevent the prophecy that led to it coming true, thus fulfilling the prophecy. The 2006 Indian film Krrish is a modern take on the story of Krishna.

Another example is the Greek legend of Oedipus, wherein Laius king of Thebes is told by the Delphic Oracle that if he and his wife had a son, he would eventually kill his own father and marry his own mother. Soon thereafter, Laius' wife Jocasta gave birth to a baby boy. Fearing the prophecy, Laius entrusted the infant to a servant to be abandoned in a nearby mountain. Rather than leave the child to die, though, the servant passed the baby on to a Corinthian shepherd. Eventually, the child would become the adopted son of the Corinthian king and queen, Polybus of Corinth and Merope, who named him Oedipus. Oedipus would indeed eventually come to kill his father in a roadside dispute (without knowing who he really was), and unwittingly marry his mother when he became king of Thebes for ridding the city of the Sphinx.

Other examples

Foreshadowing is usually more subtle and works on the symbolic level. For example, if a character must break up a schoolyard fight among some boys, it might symbolically foreshadow the family squabbles that will become the central conflict of the story. Other times, it is seemingly inconsequential, with the goal of having the audience be surprised by the story's climax and yet find it justified. If a character learns that a certain man was a regular at the diner where her mot

If foreshadowing is not done carefully, the common experiences of life can make the foreshadowing too obvious and allow the audience to predict the outcome of the story. Example: a character behaves in an odd and erratic fashion and complains continuously of a headache, then later is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Foreshadowingeries of events which points to a conclusion is later found to be composed of unlikely coincidences which have been "dishonestly" added to the story by the author in an artificial way, with the sole purpose of drawing the audience into an incorrect expectation. In dience feels manipulated, and the story may be less satisfying.

References

[[he:רמז מ