Craft move: foreshadowing

 

To focus on a couple of things Jerry Spinelli tends to do in the first half of Stargirl, I will talk about the presence of foreshadowing and how Spinelli constantly seems to sum up an event in a sentence but then readers find out he is not done explaining the event. Spinnelli likes foreshadowing at the end of chapters. For example, the last line of chapter 8 reads, “How could I know that when the end came, I would be in the middle of it?” (p. 42) and the last line of chapter 12 reads, “But because of what followed, no audience would ever see it” (p. 61). Talk about whetting the appetite of readers. Stating that the interview never aired before explaining what happened at the interview causes readers to anticipate trouble. Spinelli ends up drawing out the description of the interview in length because he knows he has gotten readers’ attention. Foreshadowing is a way to tell readers so much of what happened with rich detail about movements and atmosphere since readers will sustain their interest due to their knowledge that this information is all leading up to something big.

Spinelli often discusses events by stating quickly and clearly what happened and then going into great detail about the events by mentioning specifics. For example, on page 70, Spinelli writes, “Two nights later we lost to Glendale.” This sentence comes right after the narrator describes the last basketball game that occurred, so it makes readers believe that Spinelli is not going to go into further detail about what happened during the Glendale game since Spinelli wrote so much about the other game. However, Spinelli goes on to write for more than a page about events that occurred during the game. This type of description seems backwards, but expanding on a summed up point appears to help readers understand the importance of the author's details. Another example of how the narrator goes from quick comments that cover a big point to explaining the point in great detail is seen on page 52. Spinelli writes, “Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the mot remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her” (p. 52), which sounds like he is done with his point about bad things not sticking to Stargirl, but then he unravels the point by writing,  “Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. Our bad things stuck very much to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did. But bad things falling on her – unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters – she seemed unaware of. I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her complain. All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward. She had no ego” (p. 52-53).