Foreshadowing: an Invaluable Tool in the Writer’s Toolkit

Writing fiction involves many skills that the average person does not automatically possess. Masters of the craft of novel writing become so by mastering these skills. Description, character development, plotting and pacing are just a few of the skills one must hone.

This past week I read George Orwell's 1984 for what is probably the third time. While reading, I  observed that one of the techniques Orwell used is foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which the author hints toward something that will happen later in the story. By means of foreshadowing the author generates suspense, creates tension. And in 1984 a second reading reveals just how many ways the ultimate "reveal" is foretold and how each time it increases the reader's anxiety for the central characters, Winston and Julia.

SPOILER ALERT

If you've not read the book, the following info will give away the ending. Also, if you've not read the book, then you owe it to yourself to read Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, Huxley's Brave New World and C.S. Lewis' space trilogy that culminates in That Hideous Strength. The three authors were writing at roughly the same time about things that they foresaw, things we are experiencing in various degrees at this very time in history.

The main characters are Winston, Julia and Big Brother. Winston is the central character, a man who works for the Ministry of Truth, his job being to re-write the past to make it perpetually consistent with what the Party dictates in the present.

The world he inhabits has no privacy. There are telescreens everywhere, foreshadowing our own age of Alexa and the Internet of Things. Thinking one's own thoughts is itself a crime.

There are three political realms: Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania, where Winston lives. The totalitarian state of Oceania is perpetually at war, first with one and then the other.

At the center of the story is the development of Winston's love relationship with Julia, who uses sex (sexcrime) as a means of rebellion against Big Brother. Also central to the story is Winston's diary. That is, the novel begins with his own taking up of a pen to keep a diary, a forbidden act that is punishable by death.

As the story progresses Orwell drops little clues about a place where it is always light, about a Room 101 and the Ministry of Love. The references are increasingly ominous. Readers, however, do not know how to imagine what takes place there, only that it is not good.

Eventually both Winston and Julia are caught, betrayed by a man named O'Brien whom they believed they could trust, who the thought was like themselves part of a hidden underground. Winston no doubt projected his belief that O'Brien was a co-conspirator and seduced into trusting him.

From here we accompany Winston to the Ministry of Love where he is tortured--by this very selfsame O'Brien--until his heart and mind have been altered and he not only mouths the right words, he actually loves Big Brother.

* * * *

At the center of Winston's core is his conviction that he will not betray Julia, whom he has come to love. The manner in which he is tortured is terrifying. Earlier in the book Winston and Julia have been secretly meeting in a room in a rundown place infested with bugs. A rat emerges from a rathole in the corner of the room and we can tell by Winston's reaction, and his own admission, that he is terrified of rats.

As it turns out in the end, by means of this horror that O'Brien extracts a confession from Winston. "Do it to Julia!" It's all the more heartbreaking because of Orwell's having painted the characters so vividly and you so much care about them. You really want love to win out in the end.

Had the torture scene taken place without foreshadowing, it would never have been as effective. By means of subtle references, and then later overt references, readers clearly grasp that this is not something anyone would wish for. When Winston is later incarcerated after having been arrested, other people come and go from the jail cell, each one shaken to the core when they are told they must go to Room 101. Their reactions underscore the horror that awaits.

Whether you are a writer of novels or screenplays, learning how to incorporate clues into the story is an invaluable technique for generating suspense.