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Examples Of Foreshadowing In The Cask Of Amontillado

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Foreshadowing is exactly what it sounds like. It is anything that gives a glimpse, not of the complete tale, but of a mere silhouette for the events to come. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and James Hurst’s “The Scarlet Ibis,” both embrace foreshadowing as a key element to both the storylines themselves and the atmosphere they are cloaked in. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” foreshadowing takes the shape of dialogue, dramatic irony, and verbal irony. At the very start of the story, the narrator, later revealed as Montresor, declares, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge … I must not only punish, but punish with impunity…” This introduction establishes the …show more content…

These symbols effectively foreshadow another death, Doodle’s, caused by his brothers broken carelessness. After his death, which, interestingly enough, is also quite red, the story starts to come together. “Finally I went back and found him huddled beneath a red nightshade bush… his neck and the front of his shirt were stained a brilliant red … He lay very awkwardly … making his vermilion neck appear unusually long and slim… I began to weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before me looked very familiar … I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of the rain.” The foreshadowing adds a more complete ending by wrapping it up and rendering the work more finished. Doodle’s death, being more unexpected than Fortunato’s, evokes a more emotional response, since the color red has already been introduced in various other parts of the story. To conclude, the ending has a much more powerful impact by bringing together every single time that color has been used along with the two vines, and demonstrating just how terrible pride can be. These two stories present foreshadowing in different ways, different forms, and for different purposes, yet they both foretell the single truth of

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