< Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing/Literature

Examples of Foreshadowing in Literature include:

  • A rather interesting example shows up in Elantris. Near the start there is a mention of Hrathen as the savior of Arelon which most simply put down to simply stating his thoughts. it isn't until the end that you find out that Hrathen defects when he realizes how evil dilaf is, and then sacrifices his own life to kill him, saving the entire joint population of both Arelon and Teod from being annihilated by the derethi cult.
  • Genesis 3:15 'he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.' If you're Christian, you probably think this is foreshadowing to Jesus punishing Satan (the snake) ... a few thousand years before he was born.
    • As well as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and every other prophetic book. Prophesies, in general, are this in real life.
    • In addition, many Old Testament events are similar to events in the New Testament. They are known as "types."
  • The first volume of The Lord of the Rings has this ironic example: Frodo says, "So far, my only hope has been to get here (Rivendell.) I hope I shan't have to go any further...I have had a month of exile and adventure, and I find that has been as much as I want." Guess what the next two books are about?
    • There is also Gandalf's statement that, "There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world." when they enter Moria and only shortly before they encounter the balrog.
    • Also in FOTR, Elrond says to Boromir, "Slow should you be to wind that horn again until you stand once more on the borders of your land and dire need is upon you." The next time he uses the horn, just before his death, fits these circumstances perfectly.
  • Harry Potter has foreshadowing all the way through the seven book series, but there's also a lovely piece of cinematic foreshadowing in the Chamber of Secrets film: after the scene in which McGonagall describes the Chamber of Secrets, which has been hidden for centuries, it fades to a shot showing exactly what the characters are searching for: the secret entrance to the chamber. It's not until the end of the film that they learn that's what it is.
    • Many of Professor Trelawney's predictions, while mostly inaccurate, sometimes end up echoing events later in the book. The most obvious example is in Half Blood Prince, in which Trelawney goes over Tarot readings. The Tower comes up, and Trelawney uses it to predict Harry's death... again. It's not till later in the book, in a chapter titled The Lighting Struck Tower when Snape kills Dumbledore on top of the astronomy tower.
      • And of course, you have to consider also the fact that Harry did die in Deathly Hallows. Sort of. He was Only Mostly Dead.
    • Ron is king of this. He says about Tom Riddle "maybe he killed Myrtle, that'd have done everyone a favour." Riddle did kill her! In Deathly Hallows, Ron almost predicts the taboo on saying "Voldemort." The exact words were "It feels like a jinx or something."!
      • A bunch of the Horcruxes are even shown in the book, such as Slytherin's locket and Ravenclaw's tiara, although this overlaps with Chekhov's Gun.
    • Harry foreshadows the events of the Tri-Wizard Tournament fairly early in Goblet of Fire.
    • An incredibly early bit of Foreshadowing occurs right in book one, when in an echo of his being Sorted, Harry dreams that a voice comes from Quirrell's turban telling him he should be in Slytherin. Apart from the fact we later find out he has qualities Slytherin (and Voldemort) prized and that he obtained some of these due to his link with Voldemort, there's the fact that of course Voldemort himself was under Quirrell's turban. Sometimes it seems as if Tonks's notion that Harry has Seer blood may not be that far off the mark...
    • This happens even in throw-away lines! In Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets after Harry was sent down the wrong chimney via Floo Powder, Draco is seen examining a cursed opal necklace that claimed the lives of 19 Muggles. Sound familiar? Not to mention that Draco had also shown interest in the Hand of Glory, which should also sound familiar for the very same reason.
    • And he (Harry) is standing in the very cabinet that Draco uses to smuggle the Death Eaters into Hogwarts in Half-Blood Prince. Also note that Harry never closes the door to the cabinet all the way, which would result in him getting transported away.
    • In Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, it was mentioned that "Always the innocent are the first victims,". In Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, the first victims of Voldemort's plan to be completely restored were Bertha Jorkins, Frank Bryce, Bartemius Crouch Senior (he was at fault but did not intend to help Voldemort) and Cedric Diggory.
  • Early in Wyrd Sisters, Granny Weatherwax says "You'd have to be a born fool to be a king." By the end of the book, the court Fool has become the king. And not only that, he is a 'born fool' - his father and grandfather were Fools before him.
    • A similar example crops up in Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb. The character Kettle is part of a group who's looking for the White Prophet, and says with respect to their search "Perhaps it is a fool's errand that I go on." Again, the White Prophet turns out to be the Fool.
  • happens throught all the second part of Foundation and Empire, this part of the book being full of situations that not only hint the powers of The Mule but also wouldn't have been possible without them; the casual reader passes by without noticing anything out of place, is only when you have completed the book and start rereading it that everything makes sense.
  • Another Discworld example: characters in previous City Watch books remark that there's no reason why the older but perfectly healthy Lady Sybil shouldn't be able to have children. It still takes her husband the whole length of The Fifth Elephant to get the happy hint.
    • And another: in Thief of Time there's a weird little section where Lu-Tze cuts off a Yeti's head in order to show Lobsang their ability to manipulate time and avoid death. It seems sort of out of place, especially considering they're supposed to be in a bit of a hurry to get to the city, until Lu-Tze says "I hope I'm never that desperate," at which point you are absolutely, without-a-doubt certain that by the end of the book he will be. Of course, this may also just be an example of The Law of Conservation of Detail and readers being Genre Savvy.
      • More cryptically, Death in the same novel is unable to see Lobsang Ludd. This appears to be hinting that Lobsang is immortal, until Fridge Logic reminds the reader that Death has seen plenty of other immortals before. The real reason turns out to be far stranger than that: Lobsang's life as an individual isn't destined to end with his death at all; instead, he ceases to exist as Lobsang when he merges with his other self, Jeremy Clockson.
  • Two notable examples occur in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. In the very first scene, George complains about how Gentle Giant Lennie always accidentally kills his pet mice. About halfway through the book, Carlson shoots Candy's dog. Both of these nicely build up the drama of the last chapter.
    • The whole book is dripping with foreshadowing if you know where to look.
  • An excellent example of foreshadowing is The Wheel of Time in The Great Hunt Turak mentions that the Emperess of the Seanchan Empire rules from the Court of the Nine Moons, and her favorite daughter is named Tuon. In The Shadow Rising Mat Cauthon is told he will marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Guess who the Daughter of the Nine Moons is? To put this in perspective The Great Hunt is the second book in the series, The Shadow Rising is book 4, and The Winter's Heart where Tuon actually enters the story is book 9.
    • This is in fact pretty much the entire principle behind the Wheel of Time books. That and clothes.
  • About halfway through Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth says to Darcy, "I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry." He is.
    • Long before that, when Jane is ill, Darcy and Elizabeth discuss the eventuality of Mr. Bingley suddenly leaving Netherfield at a friend's request. Darcy thinks it would be a lack of character to yield so easily to a friend, and Elizabeth thinks it's perfectly natural to be influenced by those who are dear to you. Guess who changed their opinion when Bingley does leave Netherfield in a hurry at his friend's request?
  • In the first Redwall book, Cluny had a nightmare where he was being chased by Martin the Warrior, and as the sword "struck" him, he was woken up by a giant bell. His final battle is in the bell-tower, where Matthias uses Martin's sword to chop the rope keeping the bell up, and it lands on Cluny's head.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire is so full of this.
    • One example, right from the start: Lord Eddard Stark, on his way back from an execution, finds a direwolf (the symbol of his house) killed after being run through with the horn of a great stag (the symbol of House Baratheon). Sure enough, the coming of his old friend Robert Baratheon leads to the crippling of his son, the outbreak of civil war in Westeros, and his execution. It's also an example of in character foreshadowing: everyone else gets really uncomfortable when they see it, and his wife Catelyn wishes he would put more stock in its meaning.
    • Beyond the Wall, Jon Snow is told a tale about his ancestors that involved two people hiding the crypts of Winterfell so well that no one found them. Guess how Bran, Rickon, and their group survive the Greyjoy-Bolton attack of Winterfell.
  • Animorphs is full of this, usually in the form of remarks the characters make. Read the series. Then read it again. You will be amazed. Here are only a select few examples from only the first book:
    • Marco: "We'd be totally famous. We'd get to be on Letterman for sure." At the end of the series, they're practically the most famous people on Earth. Marco not only gets on Letterman, he even gets his own show.
    • Visser Three: "[...] And then I'll be Visser One." He does get promoted to Visser One near the end of the series.
    • Jake (as narrator): "I think maybe the Andalite meant even more to Tobias than to the rest of us." Elfangor, the Andalite in question, is later revealed to be Tobias' father.
    • [-Marco: "Maybe it's your own brother you'll end up destroying." Jake: "Yes, maybe that's what will happen."-] Jake ends up ordering his cousin to kill his brother.
    • Jake: "Tobias! Get a grip. Don't start eating mice just because you're in a hawk's body. What's next? Roadkill?" Tobias ends up eating mice exactly because he gets stuck in a hawk body. He also resorts to roadkill when he has bad hunting luck.
    • Cassie: "What are we going to do with dolphin morphs?" They acquire dolphin morphs shortly after, and use them on quite a number of underwater missions.
    • Jake (at Tobias): "Too late for you to morph back now." Uttered in reference to the strategic situation, right before Tobias passes the time limit and gets stuck in his hawk body.
    • Also done without words in the first book. Tobias is the one who has the deepest connection with Elfangor, who stays with him the longest. He does not know why, but we find out why in The Andalite Chronicles, with the parental reveal.
  • Done rather badly in Twilight: Bella says something like "nobody's gonna bite me" in the first chapter. If you already know that the book is about vampires, which the back cover explicitly mentions, then this is pretty blatantly obvious.
  • The Horus Heresy books, particularly early on, seem to be a contest between the authors as to who can foreshadow the Foregone Conclusion best. There are a lot of comments about how space marines fighting other space marines would be unthinkable, gods and religions, particularly malignant ones, are a silly idea, etc etc.
  • In Z for Zachariah, a character who later turns out to be a Complete Monster tells the protagonist "Ann Burden, you're going to wish I'd never come here." At the time he doesn't seem serious, but turns out to be very right.
  • Matthew Reilly's Hover Car Racer has several bits of foreshadowing for important races. In professional races, the steering wheel is the only part of the car required to cross the line to finish the race if the car crashes close to the line (except for a particular race, and this becomes important too). Jason has dreams about blacking out on Liberty's Elbow (a tight hairpin turn around the Statue of Liberty). The Bradbury Principle is mentioned a couple of times before it happens.
  • In Dale Brown's Fatal Terrain, Brad Elliott says that he "always thought I'd buy the farm in the cockpit of a B-52 after just saving the world from thermonuclear meltdown". Guess what...
  • The lovely thing about the Suzumiya Haruhi novels is the anachronistic order which it's presented. There are foreshadows almost everywhere. For example, in Snow Mountain Syndrome, Kyon casually mentions a crazy ex-classmate who wanted to confess to Nagato. In the next novel, there's a story about it. The best foreshadow was from the first book, Melancholy, where Kunikuda mentioned that Kyon liked strange girls, and Kyon protests, claiming that she was just a good friend, and nothing more. In the ninth novel, Sasaki is introduced, and she IS strange enough to have her own anti-SOS Brigade.
    • A truly hilarious example in the first novel. When Haruhi decides to recruit (kidnap) Mikuru into the (then unnamed) SOS Brigade, as Haruhi runs off to retrieve her, Kyon jokingly wonders if Haruhi had finally found an alien. Having run into Haruhi as she was leaving the club room, the next paragraph (only a sentence long), describes him entering the room. The very next line after that is, "Yuki Nagato was already in the club room." (From the English translation)
  • In the Attack of the Clones novel after Zam, the assassin who tried to kill Padme, fails to shake Anakin clinging to her flyer off, she thinks desperation that "Whoever rids the galaxy of these meddling stubborn creatures indeed deserves the mantle of an Imperor". Well, what'd you know!
  • Bokonon tells the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle what he would do if he were "a younger man"...such as the protagonist. It is heavily implied that John does exactly what Bokonon says. We know for a fact that he does part of it by the end of the book.
  • Percy Jackson and The Olympians: In The Last Olympian, when Percy is trying to determine the most strategic location for his one mortal point, he chooses the small of his back in favor of an armpit, being more dignified. Anyone want to guess where Luke's body's Achilles spot is?
  • The novel To Kill a Mockingbird spends an entire chapter detailing local racist Bob Ewell's attempts at getting revenge on everyone he blames for being outed as a liar (he had beaten his daughter after catching her trying to seduce a black man and forced her to accuse the innocent man of rape. Despite evidence of his innocence, the man was convicted and fatally shot trying to escape.), stalking the man's widow, the trial judge, and explicitly threatening the man's lawyer, Atticus Finch. In the next chapter, as Atticus' children prepare to go to a Halloween party, their aunt mentions an uneasy feeling, "Something just walked over my grave". The children are viciously attacked by Ewell on their way home, and it is all but stated that they would have been killed had someone not heard their screams and come to help.
    • When Atticus, who has made it clear that he is adverse to violence, goes out into the neighborhood to "take care of" the rabid dog it foreshadows both his battle against the legal system and the climax of the book.
  • And Then There Were None. Soon after arriving to a manor with several others, one of the characters goes into his room and takes a bath while pondering what he's going to do next: "Warm steaming water - tired limbs - presently a shave - a cocktaildinner. And after - ?" He dies during the dinner.
  • In Myth-Chief, Aahz and Skeeve are competing over who gets to be the new president of M.Y.T.H., Inc. Early on, Guido accidentally calls Bunny "boss", foreshadowing who eventually gets the job.
  • In Moby Dick, the landlord of the inn at the beginning of the book is named Peter Coffin. At the end, Ishmael survives by clinging to a coffin.
  • The 2003 Bionicle book Tales of the Masks is full of foreshadowing, hinting at a mysterious, forgotten past and an ancient city called Metru Nui. The following two years focused entirely on this. Later, in the '05 book Time Trap, Toa Vakama received a vision that faintly hinted at the '06 storyline.
  • A very coy example appears in Steven Brust's Phoenix, in which Vlad asks Loiosh if Rocza is pregnant in passing. This seems innocuous at the time, except that Loiosh replies that Rocza isn't pregnant, but is "a little closer to Cawti". Turns out that Vlad should have been asking Cawti whether she was pregnant.
  • In the Sword of Truth novels, the best example is in the sixth book, Faith of the Fallen. Right after Nicci forcibly takes Richard prisoner and right before he leaves with her to the Old World, Kahlan tells Richard that he should, "Carve something to make Nicci see that you should be free." Richard dismisses this as unnecessary and silly. At the climax, when Nicci sees the statues on the cover of the book that Richard carved, she has an epiphany, sets Richard and Kahlan free, and pulls a Heel Face Turn.
  • In the first chapter of Dead Souls the author mentions that Chichikov (the protagonist) is able to talk about custom officials "as if he had been one of them". Much later we'll learn that this has indeed been the case - and that he tried a big smuggle operation, which almost would've made him a rich man.
  • Originally, each Magic School Bus book ended with Ms. Fizzle setting up classroom decorations and donning an outfit relating to the subject of the next book. (eg, the book preceding the class' trip inside a hurricane ended with her displaying weather-measuring equipment and wearing a dress boasting stormy imagery.) Series Fauxnales had Ms. Frizzle wear a dress covered in question marks on the last page.
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:
  • In Conspiracies, Repairman Jack encounters the Twins, agents of the Ally who are the basis for that Verse's "men in black" rumors, and are noted for driving around with their headlights off. After his attempt to get away from the pair causes their deaths, Jack vacates the area, driving away in the dark with his headlights off. Guess whose job he just inherited?
  • In Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Nastassya Filippovna makes a comment about Rogozhin becoming consumed by his passions and ending up being exiled to Siberia. Much later on, Rogozhin murders her...and is sentenced to fifteen years' hard labour in Siberia.
  • Early in S.E. Hinton's That Was Then, This Is Now, Byron muses about how Angela would look beautiful even with all her hair cut off. Later in the book, his friend Mark does exactly that to her while she's passed out drunk.
  • Jack London's short story, "To Build A Fire", is most frequently used to teach this trope in high school English classes. The reader knows the main character's a goner long before he does.
  • In The Kite Runner, Amir reads Hassan a story about Rostam and Sohrab. Rostam kills Sohrab in battle, not knowing that Sohrab is his son. Later in the book, Amir blames himself for Hassan's death, and learns that he was his half-brother.
    • In "Lost In a Good Book", second of Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, pairs of amusingly named agents appear throughout the novel. Examples include agents 'Kannon' and 'Phodder', and 'Lamm' and 'Slaughter'. These names foreshadow their inevitable horrible deaths.
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