Foreshadowing In Life After High School

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In Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Life After High School”, Oates uses symbolism, irony, and foreshadowing along with a man vs. self and a man vs. society conflict to reveal the universal theme that pretending to be something you’re not can end up destroying a person. Foreshadowing can reveal many things about a story including the future actions that will take place, along with giving hints of the story’s true meaning. Oates uses foreshadowing to reveal to us what might be going on in Zachary’s mind and the daily struggle he goes through. In the beginning we are given a background of Zachary’s love life, Oates mentions that He had “… never to anyone’s recollection asked a girl out before… (517)”; this tells us that Zachary has never tried …show more content…
The irony of the title itself, “Life After High School”, leads us to believe the story will take us on a journey of a person and/or couples life once they have left high school. It could tell a love story of a couple once they have graduated and their love story through college. However, in the story, they are still in high school and it doesn’t lead to a happy ending you would expect. The story is about a teenage boy, Zachary Graff, forcing himself to conform to the mainstream of what is expected of boys his age in the 50’s, Zachary forces himself to try to love a girl or at least make it seem like he loves her when in reality he doesn’t like girls at all. The story tells us about the days leading up to the day he commits suicide and the actions he performs in order to have people believe he likes girls. The irony of the opening scene is that it gives an impression of a Romeo and Juliet story but turns out to be deeper than a love story between a boy and a girl. We expect the two to be mutually in love but ironically they aren’t in love at all, ironically Zachary wishes he was in love with Sunny. The irony of Sunny’s nickname and how she abandons it after Zachary’s death can also relate to the theme of the story that pretending to be someone you aren’t can hurt yourself and the people around
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