Foreshadowing Definition: How to Use Foreshadowing in Your Fiction

Foreshadowing is a clue in the text that hints at events to come. Much like in real life, where we see the signs of things happening in the present by paying close attention to the past, foreshadowing tells us that what hasn’t happened, yet, is surely inevitable. 

Have you ever woken up with an unsettling feeling, and then something terrible happens later in the day? Or, has your boss ever hinted at the great work you’re doing, then offered you a promotion a couple months later? When this hinting-and-happening occurs in fiction, you get foreshadowing—a powerful tool for creating a complex plot.

Often, foreshadowing in fiction is subtle, like when Jane Eyre dreams of Thornfield Hall in ruins, or when Romeo proclaims “My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” In these scenarios, the reader is not aware that an event was foreshadowed until after they have reflected on the text—but this reflection, and the employment of foreshadowing in literature, makes a text richer and truer to life.

But what is foreshadowing precisely, how do readers benefit from it, and how do writers wield it to their advantage? Let’s take an in-depth look at this complex literary device, with an eye towards foreshadowing examples in fiction and suggestions for your own work.

Foreshadowing Definition: What is Foreshadowing?

As our instructor Jack Smith says, “A story or novel hooks the reader if several conditions are met: if there is an interesting protagonist, an interesting plot, and interesting language. These are the three big ones. Forsake any of these and your work will fail.”

One element of good plot is foreshadowing. Readers like to watch for signs of future plot development (signs, not signposts). In other words, the potential for a plot’s development is clued in the text, but not stated so openly that we know what happens next.

This is foreshadowing: these hints of what’s to come in the story. Examples of foreshadowing in fiction can be at the literal level (ex: a character threatens to do something), the symbolic (ex: a crow foretells a character’s death), or somewhere in between. But, it’s clear when we look back on the text that what was to come was inevitable. 

Foreshadowing definition: Clues of what comes next in the story. These are signs, not signposts, of future plot development.

Hinting at these future events helps pull the reader along in the story, while also complicating the narrative. In real life, it often feels like certain actions and events foreshadow our own destinies. Foreshadowing doesn’t just compel the reader, it emulates life to its truest possible extent.

Let’s take a look at some foreshadowing examples in literature, before turning to possibilities in our own works of fiction.

Foreshadowing Examples

The following foreshadowing examples come from published works of classic literature. Links to the text have been supplied where possible. Do note that, because foreshadowing often points towards climactic events in the novel, some spoilers are necessary.

Foreshadowing Examples in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

You can find the full text of this novel at Project Gutenberg.

Fitzgerald’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby, details the tragedy of the American Dream. The novel’s titular protagonist, Jay Gatsby, becomes obsessed with obtaining the love of Daisy Buchanan.

When we first encounter Gatsby, he is reaching out towards a green light that is shining on Daisy’s side of the dock. This is an enduring symbol of the novel, because Gatsby is reaching out for something faint, ephemeral, and unattainable, much like Daisy herself. Gatsby’s relationship to Daisy is doomed from the start, as she is already married to a classmate of Gatsby’s, and she chooses to relinquish any agency in her relationships.

Gatsby’s death is also foreshadowed in the novel. Early on, Nick (the narrator) writes that Gatsby “turned out all right at the end.” That line suggests that the story ends without major consequence, but it’s a red herring. Upon a re-read, it seems to suggest that Gatsby ends up the hero of the story, since he actually dies towards the novel’s end.

Explaining this death requires a bit of backstory. Daisy, Gatsby’s beloved, is married to Tom. Tom also has a mistress named Myrtle, and Myrtle has a husband named George. Daisy kills Myrtle in a car accident. George, believing that Gatsby killed Myrtle, kills Gatsby in revenge. Prior to this, there are frequent mentions of death, car accidents, carelessness, and even hearses, all of which conspire to foreshadow Gatsby’s demise.

Foreshadowing Examples in Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved, perhaps Toni Morrison’s best-known novel, is about a family of former slaves after the American Civil War whose house is haunted by a mischievous ghost. The novel frequently foreshadows the identity of this ghost. It’s important to note the traumas of American Slavery often recur throughout the novel, warping Beloved’s sense of linear time, so some instances of foreshadowing might also be explained as backstory.

Sethe, the novel’s protagonist, clings on to what little family she can hold at 124 Bluestone Road. The house has been haunted for years, which drove away Sethe’s sons 8 years prior to the start of the novel. Initially, they exorcize the house. But, soon after, the ghost comes back in the form of Beloved, a mysterious young woman who stays with the family.

Later in the novel, it is revealed that Sethe once fled slavery, crossing the Kentucky border into Ohio. She was abducted and forced to return to slavery, but before the U.S. marshals found her, she killed her eldest daughter, not wanting her children to return to slavery with her. This complicated act of love has come back to haunt Sethe in the form of Beloved, who becomes an unhealthy obsession for Sethe. Throughout the novel, she seeks forgiveness from her daughter for the murder she was forced to commit.

Beloved’s identity is frequently foreshadowed. When Sethe recounts how she killed her eldest daughter, she only suspects the identity of Beloved. Prior to this, it is clear that the ghost haunting 124 Bluestone Road is a baby, and that Sethe had an unnamed daughter who had died 18 years ago. There are also frequent references to the throat, including a scene later in the novel when Beloved tries to slit Sethe’s throat; this foreshadows the revelation that Sethe killed her daughter by cutting her throat with a handsaw.

As a result of the interplay between past and present, foreshadowing functions as a form of recurring trauma, allowing Sethe to relive the horrors of her past and to reconcile those horrors. The novel forms an enduring message about hope, recovery, and the necessity of community, especially in the aftermath of unfathomable trauma.

Foreshadowing Examples in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

You can find the full text of this novel here.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about racial justice in the Jim Crow South, as told from the perspective of Scout Finch. Scout’s father, Atticus, becomes the attorney of Tom Robinson, a black man who has been wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting Mayella Ewell.

An all-white jury declares Tom Robinson guilty, despite the fact that Atticus proves how Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, are lying. Then, Tom Robinson is killed trying to escape from prison.

Although justice does not prevail how the reader wants it to, the events of the trial humiliate the Ewells, as the townspeople clearly see how Bob and Mayella lied and that Mayella made frequent advances on Tom Robinson. As a result, Bob Ewell tries to kill Scout and her brother, Jem. They are rescued by their neighbor, Boo Radley, and Jem breaks his arm.

All of this is foreshadowed, albeit vaguely, at the start of the novel. Scout is talking about the time Jem broke his arm when he was almost 13 when she writes “I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.”

For writers, pay attention to how foreshadowing is drawing the reader into the story. We don’t know why Jem breaks his arm, but we know it has to do with the Ewells and with Boo Radley. When we meet these characters later in the novel, our attention has been focused towards them, and we know to trust that the story will satisfy.

Foreshadowing Examples in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

You can find the full text of this novel here.

Of Mice and Men is a novella about two migrant workers, George and Lennie, during the Great Depression. George is cautious and smart, while Lennie is physically strong but unintelligent, and George often has to protect Lennie from the consequences of his strength and foolishness.

Lennie’s antics make it much harder for both him and George to hold onto stable work. At the beginning of the novella, the two are wandering through California after Lennie was accused of trying to assault a woman (though it was simply a misunderstanding).

Soon after working at a new farm, Slim, a gentle muleteer, has to kill four pups that his dog recently birthed because the mother couldn’t support that many. This introduces the idea that anything too weak for the world isn’t fit to survive, and it also foreshadows Lennie’s death.

Later, a rancher named Candy has to kill his old and weakened dog. Carlson, a fellow ranch-hand, kills the dog for Candy, but Candy laments that he would have rather done it himself.

At the end of the novella, Lennie has accidentally broken the neck of a woman on the farm. (This is also foreshadowed earlier when Lennie kills a puppy by stroking its fur.) Lennie’s accident forces a lynch mob to form on the farm, but before they can kill him, George kills Lennie himself, knowing he will deliver a more merciful death, and believing that Lennie’s closest friend should kill him, as Candy wishes he could have killed his dog himself.

All of this foreshadowing, as well as Lennie’s inevitable death, points towards the harsh lives that migrant workers lead, as they often had to make difficult and isolating decisions for the sake of their survival in a cruel, unforgiving world.

4 Foreshadowing Techniques for Writers

Here’s Jack Smith on how writers can employ foreshadowing techniques in their fiction. 

The Importance of Foreshadowing

The value of foreshadowing is that of knitting your story or novel together.

The value of foreshadowing is that of knitting your story or novel together. Readers want to experience the world you’re creating, and they also want to make meaning of it.

In real life, we’re likely to notice certain patterns, how one thing leads to another, or how one thing we did might well have predicted—if we’d been thoughtful enough to notice it—something that followed, perhaps weeks, months, or even years later. Just like fictional characters, we can’t look ahead and see what’s coming, but also, like fictional characters, with hindsight we can see certain patterns and connections.

When you work with foreshadowing, you’re making those connections. You’re creating suspense for the reader, if not for the protagonist, who might be clueless until something good—or bad—happens.

You’re also playing with time and using it as a vehicle for the themes your novel explores. Toni Morrison uses foreshadowing to reflect the ongoing nature of trauma. John Steinbeck uses foreshadowing to suggest the impenetrable despair of migrant workers during the Great Depression. How else can we use plot, foreshadowing, and the nature of time itself to resemble the truest aspects of the human experience?

Master Foreshadowing at Writers.com

Foreshadowing can complicate your plot, the psychology of your characters, and the possible outcomes of your stories. (And what is foreshadowing for, if not to complicate things?) If you’re looking to master the subtle art of the foreshadow, take a look at the upcoming courses at Writers.com, where you’ll receive expert feedback on the stories you write.