Foreshadowing and Inevitability

• Act One opens and closes with foreshadowing of Willy's fate. This is a literary technique used in other AQA Aspects of Tragedy texts.
• The play's title and opening line (e.g. "I'm tired to the death") serve to foreshadow Willy's fate and create a tragic sense of inevitability.
• Miller also ends Act One on a similar not of impending tragedy as the lights go down on Biff holding the rubber tubing which Willy is planning to use to kill himself.
• This sense of inevitability- of a character unable to escape his/her fate- is also created in the other AQA Aspects of Tragedy texts.
• For example,

  Tess of the D'urbervilles:

  Similarly, Tess of the D'urbervilles, Hardy's narrator explicitly states that Tess is used as "sport" by "the President of the immortals."
• This recalls the tragic figures of classical tragedy who are brought down by the Gods.
• Throughout the novel, Hardy's symbols often serve to foreshadow later events.
• E.g. Tess' red ribbons forewarning readers of the bloodshed and passion to follow.