Foreshadowing In Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Foreshadowing, commonly used to hint or give clues to future events, creates an overall suspense and desire for the reader to constantly yearn to continue. Dickens utilizes foreshadowing to hint at the upcoming death and darkness that will overwhelm all living within it. Day and night, the poor peasants work in order to provide enough food for their families, rarely celebrating with large feasts or drinks. Just outside the wine shop in Saint Antoine, a cask of wine shatters and “the red wine stain[s] the ground of the narrow street in the suburb… where it was spilled” which the desperate community quickly gulps down (Dickens 32). The wine spilling foreshadows the start of the Revolution and the many deaths that would occur during the tragic

famine. Constantly, Madame Defarge sits and knits from sunrise to sunset as she observes each and every individual from afar, hiding herself behind her sewing needles and thread. She “knit[s], in her own stitches and her own symbols” the simple codes that will end lives soon thereafter (Dickens 171). Secretly, Madame Defarge permanently sews in names of the unfortunate souls who will soon die due to her precise stitches that the Revolutionaries utilize later on. While Lucie waits to see if her beloved husband, Charles Darnay, will see her from the prison window, the Wood Sawyer nags at her, to see how far she will go until he pushes her over her edge. As he converses with her, he goes “on sawing his wood” and as “the billet[s] fell… he threw [them] into a basket” for the upcoming festivities (Dickens 275). Each piece of wood chopped from the trunk further foreshadows heads being removed from their bodies by La Guillotine. The wine spilling, Madame Defarge knitting her registry of death, and the Wood Sawyer chopping chunks of wood all foreshadow the fatal crises that soon will take place.