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What are some examples of foreshadowing in the story, "Everything that Rises Must Converge"?

The very first details in the story foreshadow the end.  In the first line, we learn that Mrs. Chestny suffers from high blood pressure and has been going to a class at the local YMCA to lose some weight.  Her face gets redder and redder throughout the story, as Julian does things to purposely upset her, and this serves as more foreshadowing.  At one point, her face is an "angry red," and soon after, it becomes "unnaturally red, as if her blood pressure had risen."  All of this detail prepares us for her eventual stroke at the story's end.


Further, Mrs. Chestny first says that at least she "'won't meet [herself] coming and going,'" and then a short while later, she quotes the saleslady as having said precisely the same thing in the store.  The repetition of the idea that Mrs. Chestny expects to be the only person she meets who has the financial resources to purchase this unique and costly hat seems to foreshadow the fact that she's about to meet someone else wearing the hat, someone she wouldn't expect to have the money for it.

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