Foreshadowing is a technique used by some authors to give a subtle hint of something that will happen at the end of the story. Good authors give the readers some clues about what the end of the story will be about. This can be done because of many reasons; to make the reader feel more involved, making it more interesting, to give the reader some hints so as not to lose track. Both, ‘Mrs. Bixby and the Coronel’s Coat’ and ‘The Flowers’ are depicted as stories that are written in a way that need to use foreshadowing. Along this essay, we will try to find and discuss the instances of foreshadowing shown by the authors, and why they chose to place them in that place. To begin with, we can say that on ‘Mrs. Bixby and the Coronel’s Coat’, the author tries to convince us that Mrs. Bixby is the only guilty. He presented her as ‘’cunning, deceitful and lecherous’’ woman.
Even though these facts are presented, the author manages to hide some information, as for example that the husband was cheating on her with her secretary, when he first describes the husbands in the stories as ‘’decent clean-living men, working hard at their job’’. But, at the end of the story, Cyril, her husband, told her that he was ‘’going to be late home’’ that night, giving us the hint that he was staying with the secretary. And after that, ‘’Miss Pultery, the secretary assistant, came sailing past her down the corridor on her way to lunch (…) just exactly like a queen in the beautiful black mink coat that the Coronel had given to Mrs. Bixby’’.
Another instance of foreshadowing we can find, is when the author states that ‘’what you lose in on the swings, you get back on the roundabout’’, this sentence at first seems irrelevant, but, it is describing how her ‘’innocent husband’’ will surprise her, and how she, and we readers amused by this. It is a comparison about good and bad things in life, how first the swings are beneficial, and the roundabouts are a setback. Secondly, we will talk about ‘’The Flowers’’. It is about a little ‘’innocent’’ girl, which ‘’was ten and nothing existed for her but her song’’.
In this story, also, in between lines, the author manages to present an instance of foreshadowing by saying that ‘’the air held a knees that made her nose twitch’’ This cold and sharp wind is the hint that we readers are given so as to realize that, the happy spring day that it was described first, is not going to end being such, but on the contrary, something unexpected will happen. In fat, in the end of the story the girl finds a tall land working man, dead. In both stories we can see how important is to find this instances of foreshadowing, and the impact that they cause, revealing of a change, or twist in them.
