Foreshadowing

Why the gap in blog posts? Was I on holiday again? No. To tell the truth, I was planning a post after reading the Iliad - it just lasted me a little longer than I'd first anticipated. Don't know why that should have occasioned me such surprsie, given that it runs to 24 books. But then you get caught up reading footnotes, and one thing leads to another, and...

The subject this time is foreshadowing. It's almost a dirty word in storytelling. 'Little did young Christopher Plumley he know, when he first joined the service of Count von Dastard D'e'Ville, of what horrors would transpire...' Who would write such a sentence now? It seems quaint, from a period when the world was Newtonian, effects followed causes, and clockwork inevitability seemed a fact of life. I suppose this is what would traditionally have been called fate - a subject that doesn't come up in fiction too often. But more's the pity?

We hate the idea of fate. We must feel anything could happen, so we are expected to slowly and grudgingly "reveal" character in modern novels. A plot "unfolds", usually with the greatest reluctance and shyness. In many cases it's questionable whether a story can be said to have begun until it its premise is revealed by the ending.

The Iliad begins with its story immediately, with Achilles arranging with Jupiter to pitch the Greeks against Troy, for the sole purpose of proving to Agamemnon that the king cannot get by without him. So Achilles doesn't even get dressed to go to work until the twenty-first book; we can surmise from Book 1 that he isn't going to until somewhere very near the conclusion. We know pretty early on that Hector will die, that Achilles will die, that Patroclus will die, and that Ulysses won't (or what's the Odyssey about?). We know that Achilles knows that Hector will die, Hector knows Hector will die, Achilles knows Achilles will die, Achilles knows Patroclus will die if he leaves behind the ships, Hector knows Achilles will die at the hands of the beautiful coward Paris, and therefore Paris cannot die anytime soon, and Priam will be protected by Hermes even in Achilles' tent. And everyone knows, Hector knows, even Achilles must begin to know, that Achilles' vainglorious war is a lose-lose scenario.

Do we lose suspense though? Not a bit of it. There is a true pathos, not unlike that of the first world war, in the characters sensibility of their less than glorious ends; such as Hector's proud line being slaughtered, in a war he had no part in precipitating. Even what might have been a Benny Hill-like moment - a suddenly afraid Hector, finally beyond the limits of even his own powers, chased three times around the walls of Troy by Achilles - the protracted nature of the chase is unexpectedly moving; no man in the story has pushed himself further beyond the limits of mortal courage than Hector, whose must finally stand and face his own certain death, and know that the vengeful (and when it comes down to basics, better connected) Achilles, inhuman on his mother's side, will drag his body along the ground in front of Hector's surviving family.

Incidentally, you can't beat this version of poor Deucalion, finding himself in the path of Achilles:

He dropp'd his arm, an unassisting weight,
And stood all impotent, expecting fate:
From his broad shoulders hew'd his crested head:
Forth from the bone the spinal marrow flies,
And, sunk in dust, the corpse extended lies.

I have a feeling I will be writing more on this subject.

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