Content area
Full Text
O'Connor uses a lot of foreshadowing in this story. Find as many examples as you can find, including both the rather obvious ones and the 'maybes'. [Since the students have done such sleuthing in high school or earlier, this task is rather easy.]
The physical death of the family that seems to begin at the halfway point in the story - the 'accident!' - is foreshadowed in several ways. The grandmother dresses well for the family trip so that 'anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady'. As they drive along they pass a graveyard where 'five or six graves' are fenced in the middle. [This point involves a further question below.] They drive along and pass 'Toombsboro'. Overriding the first half and more of the story are references to the Misfit and what he has done and might do to people, references that suggest something horrible. After the accident, the Misfit and two others approach in a 'hearse-like automobile'. The son Wesley asks the man 'What you got that gun for?... 'Whatcha gonna do with that gun?' And the grandmother says 'You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?'
There are other foreshadowings which might be left for the students to find with deeper probing. At the point reached above, the next question asks why O'Connor has 'five or six' graves in the graveyard.' One answer is that there is no particular reason, but another answer involves the story itself.
After the entire family is murdered, a possible significance of the mention of 'five or six graves' becomes clear. There are six people in the car: the grandmother, her son Bailey, his wife, their son John Wesley, their daughter June Star, and the baby. The family will need six gravesites if each has his own but only five if the baby is buried with the mother.
The foreshadowing, then, begins 'remotely' with references to an ominous Misfit, comes closer as they drive along in the car, is within reach as the family talks or pleads with the Misfit, and culminates in the long section on the murders which occupy a relatively long time in the short story.
The next task is a common one early in the...