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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 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sorrowful Weight:
In Chapter 2, Jack continues to describe his family's home. It is full of stuff—consumer goods of all types with seemingly no purpose, tucked away into countless boxes. These boxes will stay in their house throughout the novel and their reactions to them will change over time. Here, in the first reference to them, Jack uses imagery to compare the objects' physical weight to their emotional weight:
[...] we regard the rest of the house as storage space for furniture, toys, all the unused objects of earlier marriages and different sets of children, the gifts of lost in-laws, the hand-me-downs and rummages. Things, boxes. Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content.
The boxes carry a "sorrowful weight." Just as they are literally heavy, they also weigh on Jack's and his family's souls. Jack feels ashamed of the overconsumption clogging up his home. Jack's "personal failure" and general malaise feel just as "large in scope and content" as the boxes themselves. Thus the boxes are not only the source of Jack's unhappiness but are also used as imagery to describe that unhappiness.
Later, in Chapter 29 after the Airborne Toxic Event, Jack feels that his life and health are out of his control in the wake of such an extreme natural disaster. Several visits to his doctor confirm that Jack is fine, but still, in an attempt to wrest control of his life, he starts throwing things away:
Things in the top and bottom of my closet, things in boxes in the basement and attic. I threw away correspondence, old paperbacks, magazines I’d been saving to read, pencils that needed sharpening. I threw away tennis shoes, sweat socks, gloves with ragged fingers, old belts and neckties. I came upon stacks of student reports, broken rods for the seats of director’s chairs. I threw these away. I threw away every aerosol can that didn’t have a top.
The reader can imagine that all these many items made up the "sorrowful weight" from before. In the first reference to the boxes in Chapter 2, Jack doesn't know quite what feeling the boxes give him; he can only call it "something more general." But when Jack throws away contents of the boxes after the Airborne Toxic Event, it is clear that the overflowing stuff amplifies Jack's fear of death. When Jack fears most that he will die, he overcomes his shame around the boxes from earlier in the novel and throws things away in an attempt to feel control. But while Jack can control the objects in his house, radically increasing and decreasing their quantity often, he repeatedly finds that his own life and health are far beyond his ability to control.
Related Themes:
Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Sorrowful Weight:
In Chapter 2, Jack continues to describe his family's home. It is full of stuff—consumer goods of all types with seemingly no purpose, tucked away into countless boxes. These boxes will stay in their house throughout the novel and their reactions to them will change over time. Here, in the first reference to them, Jack uses imagery to compare the objects' physical weight to their emotional weight:
[...] we regard the rest of the house as storage space for furniture, toys, all the unused objects of earlier marriages and different sets of children, the gifts of lost in-laws, the hand-me-downs and rummages. Things, boxes. Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content.
The boxes carry a "sorrowful weight." Just as they are literally heavy, they also weigh on Jack's and his family's souls. Jack feels ashamed of the overconsumption clogging up his home. Jack's "personal failure" and general malaise feel just as "large in scope and content" as the boxes themselves. Thus the boxes are not only the source of Jack's unhappiness but are also used as imagery to describe that unhappiness.
Later, in Chapter 29 after the Airborne Toxic Event, Jack feels that his life and health are out of his control in the wake of such an extreme natural disaster. Several visits to his doctor confirm that Jack is fine, but still, in an attempt to wrest control of his life, he starts throwing things away:
Things in the top and bottom of my closet, things in boxes in the basement and attic. I threw away correspondence, old paperbacks, magazines I’d been saving to read, pencils that needed sharpening. I threw away tennis shoes, sweat socks, gloves with ragged fingers, old belts and neckties. I came upon stacks of student reports, broken rods for the seats of director’s chairs. I threw these away. I threw away every aerosol can that didn’t have a top.
The reader can imagine that all these many items made up the "sorrowful weight" from before. In the first reference to the boxes in Chapter 2, Jack doesn't know quite what feeling the boxes give him; he can only call it "something more general." But when Jack throws away contents of the boxes after the Airborne Toxic Event, it is clear that the overflowing stuff amplifies Jack's fear of death. When Jack fears most that he will die, he overcomes his shame around the boxes from earlier in the novel and throws things away in an attempt to feel control. But while Jack can control the objects in his house, radically increasing and decreasing their quantity often, he repeatedly finds that his own life and health are far beyond his ability to control.
Related Themes:
