Foreshadowing is a literary device used to plant hints
about events that will occur later in the plot. There are a number of excellent examples
of foreshadowing in this story. The first comes at the end of the second paragraph, when
the narrator tells us about how she imagines hearing a fire, that we later find out is a
major part of her story:
I hear the crackle, catch a whiff of smoke from
the stove downstairs, and suddenly the room goes dark, the stitches burn beneath my
fingers, and I am sewing with a needle of hot silver, a thread of
fire.
Such events clearly
hint at a future revelation in the story of the narrator and her mother. Equally, the
description of her agility and "catlike precision" and her skill also foreshadow the
rescue of her daughter that she enacts during the fire. Note how the jump is described
before the narrator's mother makes the leap:
From below, it looked as though even a squirrel
would have had trouble jumping from the tree onto the house, for the breadth of that
small branch was no bigger than my mother's
wrist.
Of course, it is only
someone with the skill and precision of the narrator's mother who is actually able to
perform the leap, and what is more, do it in such a "matter-of-fact"
manner.
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