Literary Device: Foreshadowing

 You probably already know about the literary device called foreshadowing, using hints or clues about the future story in an earlier section.   This paragraph tells about foreshadowing in relation to the Iliad.

Homer often gives his audience hints about what is going to happen later in the story. This technique is called foreshadowing and conveys a sense of the inevitability of important events. An example of foreshadowing occurs in book 6 when Hektor leaves Andromache to return to battle while her handmaidens mourn for him as if he were already dead (500-502). Note also Hektor's pessimism which he expresses to Andromache (447-465). This foreshadowing prepares us for Hektor's death in book 22. Achilleus's approaching death (which does not occur in the Iliad) is also foreshadowed as early as book 1 by himself and his mother (352; 416).

The above examples are only the most obvious instances of foreshadowing in the Iliad. Try to find other more subtle instances of anticipation of future

Go on to next section

Application

Knowing about the device of foreshadowing can be helpful to you both as a reader and a writer.

As a reader, it helps you to make predictions as you read.  You even see quite young children being able to see a pattern of what is going to happen in a story based on the author's hints.  (sometimes, in picture books, you even see it in the picture rather than in the story).

As a writer, knowing about foreshadowing can help you keep the story from being jerky and confused.  You have probably seen in beginner's stories that one sign of inexperience is the lack of preparation in the story.  Things happen and you don't have a clue why.  

Have you ever used foreshadowing in your writing? (You might have done it by instinct because you have read so many books).

Can you think of one of your stories where putting in a clue ahead of time could make your story better?

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
     — Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817

Literary Devices: Figurative Language

“As among cattle a lion leaps on the neck of an ox or
heifer, that grazes among the wooded places, and breaks it,
so the son of Tydeus hurled both from their horses
hatefully, in spite of their struggles, then stripped their armour
and gave the horses to his company to drive to their vessels "

Homer uses a lot of similes and metaphors in the Iliad -- in fact, they have become known as Homeric or epic similes. 

This lesson is about figurative language.  Similes and metaphors are types of figurative language.  

Read:
A short presentation on different types of figurative language. 

DO:
This Quia quiz that asks you for the meaning of some common similes and metaphors.
Here is a slightly more difficult quiz called Simile, Metaphor, or Personifcation?
So You Know Your Figurative and Poetic Language?
Figurative Language Quiz for fiction writers