Previous
Flashbacks
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: Jojo
Explanation and Analysis—Stink of Death:
Jojo is filled with uncontrollable disgust while in the throes of slaughtering a goat with Pop. In this moment, Ward uses foreshadowing through visual and olfactory imagery to show Jojo’s physical and emotional response to the goat’s death:
It's the smell of death, the rot coming from something just alive, something hot with blood and life. I grimace, wanting to make Kayla's stink face, the face she makes when she's angry or impatient; to everyone else, it looks like she's smelled something nasty: her green eyes squinting, her nose a mushroom, her twelve tiny toddler teeth showing through her open mouth. I want to make that face because something about scrunching up my nose and squeezing the smell away might lessen it, might cut off that stink of death.
The visual and olfactory imagery in this passage draws attention to the fine line between death and life. Jojo describes the odor of the recently slaughtered animal as being instantly repulsive. It’s smothering him, “hot with blood and life” in a way that makes him feel as though he wants to escape the room. He feels overwhelmed by the stench of the goat and wishes that he could screw up his face in a childish pout like Kayla would. This language puts the reader in the middle of Jojo’s sensory world and reminds them that he is still very much a child. It forces their attention to focus on both the animal’s body and on Jojo’s body.
The foreshadowing in this scene links Jojo’s reaction to death with the broader ideas of death and helplessness that shape the novel. This moment predicts the mounting presence of death and violence that surrounds Jojo throughout the rest of the book, from Pop's stories about Parchman to the discovery of the ghost-tree in the final chapter. Jojo’s strong, instinctual rejection of the slaughter hints at the emotional and psychic cost of growing up in a world in which killing is normalized. This pattern begins at home, long before the road trip begins.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9: Richie
Explanation and Analysis—Trapped:
In one of the first frightening and dreamlike passages in which he talks about Parchman, Richie discusses how he never truly escaped the prison that killed him. Ward uses allegory and foreshadowing to show how Parchman continues to control Richie long after death:
I didn’t understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? [...] I was trapped, as trapped as I’d been in the room of pines where I woke up. Trapped as I was before the white snake, the black vulture, came for me. Parchman had imprisoned me again. I wandered the new prison, night after night. It was a place bound by cinder blocks and cement.
This passage is part of the novel’s overarching allegory of the prison system and other racist institutions haunting Black American lives. To Richie and people like him, Parchman is more than a prison. Richie describes Parchman as a force that pulls, holds, and re-imprisons its victims even after death. It refuses to release him no matter what he does, binding him to Earth with “cinder blocks and cement.” Richie’s vision of Parchman stands in for the larger structure of racial violence that Sing, Unburied, Sing explores. For Richie and others, the prison system does not simply punish them for crimes they have allegedly committed. Its power is everlasting because its influence is so strong that can even rewrite what happens after life ends. Richie cannot move on—not because of who he was, or what he did—but because of what Parchman represents. Institutionalized racism restricts the freedoms and the future of Black people across generations. In the novel as a whole, Parchman is a sinkhole full of this ongoing legacy of trauma and control.
The passage also foreshadows the emotional captivity that other Parchman-imprisoned Black characters will later describe. Richie’s descriptions of the hold Parchman has over him also apply to people like Pop, who isn’t dead yet but seems doomed to the same fate. Though they are not inside a literal prison, Ward’s other characters must still live in a society that restricts and damages them simply for being Black.
Related Themes:
