foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is when an author drops subtle hints or clues about something coming later in the story.  Rowling did a lot of this, and she’s brilliant at it.  And of course, there’s plenty of foreshadowing in Sorcerer’s Stone.  Day 2 discussion focuses on Rowling’s use of foreshadowing in the first novel, and it’s a simple discussion starter:

Now that you’ve got the knowledge of all seven books, where do you see clever foreshadowing in Book 1?  What’s your favorite foreshadowing from the first book?  What things from the first book have taken on new and enhanced meaning since the release of Deathly Hallows?

One of my favorites is Sirius’s motorbike – a device which seemed so innocuous in book one, but which ended up belonging to one of the key players in the story and being the means of magical escape from Privet Drive for book 7.  Think about Rowling’s parallelism here: Sirius’s bike brings Harry to 4 Privet Drive for the beginning of his 7 years there, and it takes him away at the end of his 7 years there.

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