Literary Analysis: Foreshadowing

Arthur Conan Doyle used foreshadowing throughout "The Hound of the Baskervilles" to give the reader inferences about events to come. All through the novel, many of the clues to the mystery served as covert forms of foreshadowing. I found examples of this in the first few chapters.

In the beginning chapter, Watson and Holmes employed Holmes' detective methods to make inferences about a strange visitor, Dr. Mortimer, who left a walking stick behind in Holmes' London apartment. The walking stick was described as having an inscription with the owner's name (Mortimer), credentials, and signed "from his friends at C.C.H.". This told the men that Mortimer was a physician, likely employed by Charing Cross Hospital. The earliest example of foreshadowing I noted was when Watson looked Mortimer's name up in the medical directory and cited his article, "'Some Freaks of Atavism'". I believe Doyle mentioned Atavism because it is the reappearance of a genetic feature in an individual after it had been absent for several generations. The reader discovers later about the Baskerville family legend in which the criminal behavior of an ancestor named Hugo caused the family to be cursed. Dr. Mortimer called upon Holmes' for assistance after the mysterious death of Sir Charles and his concern about whether or not the Baskerville heir, Sir Henry, would also be in danger upon his arrival to Baskerville Hall.

Also involving the deductions Holmes and Watson made when examining Mortimer's cane, was the issue of teeth marks on it made by Mortimer's pet. After Homes gave Watson his final assumptions about Mortimer, Watson asked Holmes what he inferred from the teeth marks by simply asking, "And the dog?". The reader later discovers that the Baskerville legend involved a vicious hound and that Holmes and Watson will wonder throughout the book whether the hound is real or an evil supernatural beast as the legend suggested. To Watson's question about the dog, Holmes replied that the dog had "been in the habit of carrying the heavy stick "behind his master". This statement foreshadows the novel's end when the reader (and Watson and Holmes) find out that the hound was a real hunting dog that carried out the murderous acts of his master, Stapleton.

When Dr. Mortimer approaches for the first time after leaving behind his walking stick, Holmes warns Watson, "Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life; and you know not for good or ill." This line prefigures one of the novel's predominant themes, good versus evil.

When Mortimer tells Holmes that the walking stick was a gift from friends from the hospital as a wedding gift, Holmes is surprised by the fact that Mortimer is married. He refers to this information as "bad" because it "disarranged their little deductions" about Mortimer. This foreshadows the surprise to the characters in the novel's ending when they discover Stapleton was actually married to Miss Stapleton, a woman he mistreated and claimed as only his sister.

I was impressed with how well Doyle incorporated foreshadowing of future events in clever and covert ways. The reader is most likely to focus on the story's current action and only realize its foretelling significance when the foreshadowed event is revealed. Unless the reader is as good a detective as Sherlock Holmes himself, he will not know when the death of wild horses is described in the novel, it is a presage to the villain's assumed drowning in the Grimpen mire at the end of the novel.