The Placement Of Foreshadowing In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

In the world of writing, novelists tend to place many literary devices to present the audience reading with a notion regarding a particular person, place, or thing in their novel. As literary devices can be intentionally installed as well as unintentionally, authors tend to leave it up to the audience to decide whether or not it was a choice or just a coincidence. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, many literary devices can be noticed, but the idea of foreshadowing particularly raises attention. Foreshadowing can be defined as a warning or indication of a possible future event. In The Great Gatsby, this literary device can be seen throughout the novel as a hint leading to events that would later occur. Foreshadowing in this novel has been presented in various cases that would result in a good or bad outcome. In The Great Gatsby, phenomenal moments of foreshadowing can be seen in the novel's pathetic fallacy, the actions or statements made by characters, and Gatsby's notion of being able to recreate the past.

Within The Great Gatsby, foreshadowing by pathetic fallacy has taken the role of representing a future change through nature. There have been many times in the novel where pathetic fallacy has revealed the future outcome of a situation. From pathetic fallacy, the majority of the hints have come from the weather. In The Great Gatsby, the weather has symbolically given the emotional ideology that a character's inner thoughts or feelings mirror the setting in the story. At the start of many of the chapters, the weather has represented a situation or dispute that would come to a conclusion able to be previously seen by foreshadowing. In chapter five, when the impatient Gatsby and the observant Nick await Daisy's arrival, ...

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...times Daisy had retreated back to Tom, and Gatsby was left in pain and sorrow. In the end, Gatsby's notion of recreating the past backfired on him because Daisy was not who he thought she was.

In The Great Gatsby, the use of foreshadowing is greatly prestigious. Foreshadowing is used by the characters as a way to introduce a possible event to later occur. The use of this literary device is impeccable and allows the reader to thoroughly read in between the lines to realize the events bound to take place. Within The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald is able to establish a sense of foreshadowing both on purpose and just by coincidence. All in all, the use of foreshadowing in The Great Gatsby gives the book another reason to why it is a master piece and also a flawless piece of literature.

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Macmillan, 1980.