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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
Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—No Place To Go:
An early scene in which Raskolnikov enters into a one-sided conversation with the garrulous alcoholic Marmeladov foreshadows important later events in the novel. Discussing his surprising marriage to the “well-bred” Katerina, Marmeladov states that she had “nowhere to go”:
You may judge thereby what degree her calamities had reached, if she, well educated and well bred, and of a known family, consented to marry me! But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands—she did! For she had nowhere to go. Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go? No! That you do not understand yet…And for a whole year I fulfilled my duties piously and sacredly and did not touch this” (he jabbed a finger at his bottle), “for I do have feelings.”
After the death of her first husband, Marmeladov explains, Katerina was left on her own to support her children. She consented to marry Marmeladov, then, because she had “nowhere to go,” a point that Marmeladov emphasizes multiple times, asking Raskolnikov if he knows how it feels “when there is no longer anywhere to go.” Raskolnikov will later dwell on this phrase, which carries new significance for him as he finds himself hounded by the police and his own feelings of shame, with “nowhere to go” and few options available to him.
