Very Little Foreshadowing? (was Re: Malfoy's Redemption)

[cynthiaanncoe at home.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25389

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., caliburncy at y... wrote:
> 
<snip>

> Anyway, JKR uses lots of first-time foreshadowing, which is where a 
> lot of her good pacing comes from.  And she uses a little author 
> prophecy, but not much.  I have never seen a book that used much of 
> this, nor would it probably work to do so.  So that leaves second-
time 
> foreshadowing which is, of course, what I imagine you were taking 
> about in the first place (partly why I gave two examples for it, 
since 
> it is most important to our discussion--but they may not be the two 
> best examples, I almost added more, but stopped myself).  


Luke, thanks so much for that fabulous explanation.  I hadn't really 
thought about foreshadowing in those terms.

I think the reason JKR is able to fool me so easily is that she 
doesn't foreshadow the BIG PLOT TWIST nearly as much as she 
foreshadows little things.  Consider Crouch/Moody.  We get two tiny 
direct clues (that I recall) that Moody is not himself.  One is the 
bouncing ferret business.  The second is in Padfoot Returns, when Ron 
says that Dumbledore is smart, but a really clever dark wizard could 
fool him.  Everything else, IMHO, fits perfectly with the little we 
know about Moody, or seems so unrelated to Moody that it isn't 
possible to piece the facts together (e.g., Crouch searching Snape's 
office).

The timeturner was different, though.  Sure, it was easy to see 
that "something" was going on with Hermione.  But could one tell that 
she was able to re-live time, as opposed to cloning herself with 
polyjuice potion (hmmm-- I wonder what would happen if you tried 
that)?  So there was a lot of foreshadowing leading to the same 
result -- total surprise that it was a time-turner (something never 
before introduced in the book) that would be the tool needed for the 
dramatic rescue at the end.  

Another one is Cedric's death.  I saw no foreshadowing there at all. 

Cindy (who should have paid more attention in English Literature)