Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a compositional device consisting in an indirect hint at the future events of a work, given in advance through a detail, image, symbol, remark, dream, landscape, or authorial comment, which prepares the reader for the further development of the action. Foreshadowing creates a sense of inner lawfulness, doom, or expectation and heightens the artistic unity of the work by connecting its beginning and its ending. The reader, noticing such signs, experiences a special tension, and on rereading discovers the hidden logic of the construction. The device of foreshadowing is especially characteristic of tragedy, where the motif of fate foretells the hero's destruction. In Ukrainian literature the drama-fairy-play The Forest Song by Lesia Ukrainka is saturated with foreshadowing of the tragic denouement: images of the withering of nature and the break with love prepare the finale; folk-poetic symbols in the ballads of Taras Shevchenko are also full of forebodings of disaster. Foreshadowing is a subtle means of compositional organization that deepens the semantic integrity and emotional impact of a literary work.