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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
Pages 29-60
Explanation and Analysis—Fine Mist of Blood:
Death is in the cards from the beginning of The Road, when the man falls into a coughing fit while passing through the abandoned resort town:
Slogging to the edge of the road with his back to the child where he stood bent with his hands on his knees, coughing. He raised up and stood with weeping eyes. On the gray snow a fine mist of blood.
As if the shriveled trees and crumbling buildings around them weren’t enough, this “fine mist of blood” signals a worrying sickness. The blood foreshadows the man’s death, priming the audience for a conclusion that seems all but assured.
Though the novel warns the reader in advance, it resists this foreshadowed end. It tempts the reader with expectation continually deferred: the man and boy survive, over and over again, riding one improbability after the next. The man kills the gang member. He finds enough apples to keep starvation at bay, escapes the mansion locked with cannibals, chances upon the bunker. The boy asks if they will die, and every time the man comforts his son with denial.
By the time they return from the beach, the man has weathered starvation, fever, arrow wounds, and pistol shootouts. If the plot doesn’t confirm his invincibility, it at least creates a combination of pluck and faith that resembles it. When the man does die at last, then, his sudden fall takes the reader by surprise. In recalling this earlier moment of foreshadowing, his death provokes a feeling of crushing, cruel inevitability.
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