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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
Explanation and Analysis—Back to the Beginning:
In the first chapter of the novel, Naipaul dedicates a few sentences to foreshadowing nearly the entire arc of the book:
That was, of course, before the Big Man came along and made us all citoyens and citoyennes. Which was all right for a while, until the lies he started making us all live made the people confused and frightened, and when a fetish stronger than his was found, made them decide to put an end to it all and go back again to the beginning.
Though the language in this passage is intentionally vague and doesn’t give too much away, it also outlines most of the novel to come. In the first half of the book, the President, or Big Man, gains political power in the country and eventually begins the custom of people addressing each other as citoyens and citoyennes (citizens), language imported from the French of the colonial era but reclaimed as a practice of local pride. In the second half of the book, politics become increasingly confusing and frightening as the President starts to lose sway and the country slowly succumbs to the violence that so often characterizes encounters between the modern and the traditional.
Related Themes:
Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Poison:
In Chapter 14, Naipaul foreshadows the dissolution of Salim and Yvette’s relationship with a simile. He writes:
Something had intervened; some new habit had begun to form, breaking up the delicate membrane of older memory. It was what I had been expecting. It had to be, one day. But the moment was like poison.
In this passage, Salim recognizes that something has changed between him and Yvette. This allows both him and the reader to anticipate that their relationship will soon end. The simile at the end of this quote conveys Salim’s dismayed reaction to this change. But the simile also contains multiple meanings. While at first it indicates that Salim dreads the end of his relationship with Yvette, his eventual acts of domestic violence against her demonstrate that “poison” also infiltrates their relationship.
Naipaul’s foreshadowing of the end of Salim and Yvette’s relationship also matches his attitude toward the cycles of political change in the country. Just as Salim moves between a passionate and even violent relationship and periods of solitude, the country moves between violence and peace. By aligning the personal and the social, Naipaul better conveys the emotional experience of living in postcolonial Africa.
Related Themes:
