Flashback, Flashforward & Foreshadowing English 9
Flashback is an interruption in the present action of a story to tell about something that happened in the past a jump back in time. Flashbacks are interruptions that writers do to insert past events in order to provide background or context to the current events of a narrative. By using flashbacks, writers allow their readers to gain insight into a character s motivation and provide a background to a current conflict. Dream sequences and memories are methods used to present flashbacks.
Flashback Example: -I couldn t believe I had been tricked! All of a sudden I remembered back to a summer long ago when My brother and I had gone to stay with our grandparents in the country... -When I went out of the drawing room, first thing that came into view in the open corridor way was the picture of my brother. [I just got the point why my mother used to see that portrait hours after he was killed in the WWII, and she left only when she saw any one of us coming to her.] I just heard steps and when I looked back, there was nothing that I could see. It was just a feeling of the past.
Flashforward is a jump in time. After a flashback, the author often flashes forward returning to the present time or a time in the future. The purpose of a flash forward is to show events as they are imagined by characters.
Flashforward Examples: -In a story about a middle school student who is not popular, the student daydreams about making the football team and being the most popular kid in high school. -A young mother has just had her child, and there are flash forward scenes of all of the things she cannot wait to do-first steps, first words, first bike ride, first day of school, etc. -A teacher talks with her students about what they might become, and there are flash forward scenes of students as doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. -In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, there is a flash forward scene of nuclear destruction, that the characters in the present day are working to prevent.
Foreshadowing is hints in a story that certain events are going to happen. Foreshadowing adds dramatic tension to a story by building anticipation about what might happen next. Authors use foreshadowing to create suspense or to convey information that helps readers understand what comes later. Foreshadowing can make extraordinary, even fanciful events seem more believable; if the text foreshadows something, the reader feels prepared for the events when they happen.
Foreshadowing Example #1 Shakespeare s Romeo and Juliet is rich with foreshadowing examples. One of which is the following lines from Act 2, Scene 2: Life were better ended by their hate, Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love In the balcony scene, Juliet is concerned about Romeo s safety as she fears her kinsmen may catch him. Romeo says, in the above lines, that he would rather have her love and die sooner than not obtain her love and die later. Eventually, he gets her love and dies for her love, too.
Foreshadowing Example #2 In John Steinbeck s novel Of Mice and Men, George killing Candy s dog foreshadows Candy killing Lennie because Candy is identical to George and Lennie to the dog. Even the nature of the death of the dog was the same as Lennie s as both were shot in the back of the head. Candy tells George, I ought to of shot that dog myself. He chooses to kill Lennie himself in order to save him from being killed by a stranger.
suspense of the novel. Foreshadowing Example #3 Examples of foreshadowing are also found in mystery and detective stories. The kind of foreshadowing usually found in mystery or detective novels is Red- Herring a misleading clue that distracts readers by giving them wrong hints about future events. For example, the character of Bishop Aringarosa in Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is shown to act in such a suspicious way that the readers are bound to suspect him to be the mastermind of the whole conspiracy in the church. His mysterious actions seemingly foreshadow the exposure of his crime in a later part of the narrative but later it was revealed that he was innocent and not involved in any secret action. Characters like Bishop Aringarosa contribute to the mystery and
Flashforward, Flashback and Foreshadowing Any questions???