Horizons of Rooms

How does the author use foreshadowing in Horizons of Rooms?

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The poem's final two lines raise a tone that is at odds with everything else it says. There is nothing in the previous thirty-two lines that would lead readers to believe that "living in the room" can be construed as "good fortune." On the contrary, most of the poem indicated that rooms are a curse, if only because they isolate humanity from the real world. If the poem's last line is to be accepted as being sincere, then the good fortune of living in the room can only be meant in contrast to the worse fate of what life would be without the shelter that human beings need. This sense of "good fortune" is foreshadowed earlier by the assertion in lines 11 and 12 that giving birth in a room allowed for a successful childbirth and, in line 26, by mention of the hopeful who would like so much to be in a room that they will sleep as close to it as they can get, on doorsteps.

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Horizons of Rooms