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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 4
Explanation and Analysis—Hopes Like Butterflies :
In Part 4, Ayesha is consistently surrounded by butterflies. Even when these insects are not near her, they symbolize and foreshadow her presence. An early example of this, which features a simile, occurs a few pages after Mirza Saeed first sees Ayesha eating butterflies in his garden:
The banyan's non-human inhabitants—honey ants, squirrels, owls—were accorded the respect due to fellow-citizens. Only the butterflies were ignored, like hopes long since shown to be false.
This passage describes how the village of Titlipur relates to a large banyan tree in the center of town. The banyan is essential to the identity of the village, and the villagers respect its animal inhabitants as if they were human. But they ignore the butterflies, like, Rushdie writes, "hopes long since shown to be false."
The final sentence of this passage foreshadows Ayesha's rise to power and prominence. By emphasizing the butterflies, which the reader already knows to be associated with Ayesha, Rushdie creates an expectation that something will change: that, at the least, the butterflies will be newly acknowledged. The simile comparing the butterflies to "hopes long since shown to be false," meanwhile, influences how readers perceive Ayesha's association with butterflies. This sentence frames Ayesha as someone who will rekindle hopes that have died out—who will give the villagers hope in a direction they long ago ruled out.
But the notion of such hopes being "false" also functions as a warning. The hopes the butterflies represent are not "extinguished" or "dormant"; they are "false"—a state which is permanent, not temporary. Rushdie's simile therefore warns that Ayesha is leading the villagers toward false promises by selling them false hopes.
Broadly, these two registers—that Ayesha awakens hopes, but that they are false—are both essential to understanding Ayesha and her pilgrimage. Throughout this narrative, even after the drowning of the pilgrims, it's never fully clear whether Ayesha was a false prophet or a true messenger of Gibreel. This ambiguous terrain is Rushdie's specialty: where hopes are false, but perhaps still real.
Part 7, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—India and Laurasia:
Near the end of Chapter 1 of Part 7, Saladin uses a simile and a sequence of metaphors to foreshadow the fact he and Gibreel will soon meet once more:
Things are closing in on me. Gibreel was drifting towards him, like India when, having come unstuck from the Gondwanaland proto-continent, it floated toward Laurasia. (His processes of mind, he recognized absently, were coming up with some pretty strange associations.) When they collided, the force would hurl up Himalayas.—What is a mountain? An obstacle; a transcendence; above all, an effect.
The use of figurative language here also conveys Saladin's attitude toward the approaching confrontation. Saladin's simile compares Gibreel to the Indian tectonic plate drifting toward Laurasia— which, in the simile, is Saladin himself. This simile highlights the stakes Saladin feels are involved in the upcoming meeting—they are continental, world-shaping, tectonic, capable of "hurling up Himalayas." Moreover, by referencing their mutual homeland of India, situates such conflict as some kind of cultural collision.
In the next sentence, though, Saladin remarks on his own simile by calling it a "pretty strange association." It's as if he feels this simile has emerged from his subconscious: it's a direct reflection of how he feels about Saladin, despite its strangeness. The metaphors that conclude this passage are along the same lines. A mountain is "an obstacle; a transcendence; above all, an effect." But these metaphors again comment on the situation as if from a birds-eye view; they feel, in fact, like Rushdie himself chiming in about Saladin's simile. If the upcoming collision of Gibreel and Saladin will create "Himalayas," these metaphors are Rushdie asking: what does that really mean? They clarify the foreshadowing in this passage as not simply the build-up to the meeting of Gibreel and Saladin, but also the build-up to the thematic and narrative effect such a meeting will produce.
