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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
Act 2
Explanation and Analysis—A Salesman's Death:
Sitting in Howard’s office during Act 2, Willy recalls the late salesman Dave Singleman’s storied professional legacy. The moment foreshadows Willy's own eventual death:
Do you know? When he died—and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, going into Boston—when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that.
Willy’s monologue foreshadows his own tragic ending. Dave Singleman’s “death of a salesman” immediately recalls the play’s very title, cuing the reader to expect Willy’s suicide. In sharing the beloved salesman’s story, Willy lays down a narrative template that forecasts the arc of his own.
As anticipated, Willy does die. But the two endings diverge in important—and devastating—ways. Like Singleman, Willy dies in transit and alone. Unlike Singleman, however, his death is neither glorious nor well-attended. Hundreds of colleagues mourn at the salesman’s funeral, but at Willy’s ceremony, Linda remarks about the absence of attendees. Willy offers up a eulogy for Singleman, but his own death gets met with Charley’s damning critique: “he’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.” Willy’s life charts a pathetic contrast against the one that he glorifies. Failing to be as “remembered and loved” as the subject of his story, Willy tries desperately to convince himself otherwise. What he does discover, however, is only that “there is no rock bottom” to his life.
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