The Moon is Down Question 7

            When an author writes a book, they obviously want people to read it.  I know that if I wrote a book; wait a minute that would not happen. But if I did, I would want someone to buy it, read it, and enjoy my book.  I had to write a book when I was in third grade.  I think it was ten pages long and that included three-fourths of the page being a picture.  Just that short book was difficult to write because you have to think of something that someone else would be interested in reading.  That is the same for John Steinbeck.  He had to choose a topic people would like to read.  To help him get even more people to read The Moon is Down, he included a very important technique when writing a novel.  The technique is foreshadowing.  Foreshadowing is “to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure” (Foreshadowing). 

            At one point in the novel that showed foreshadowing was when a man named Alexander Morden got fed up with being controlled so he decided to try and kill Captain Loft.  Captain Loft stated, “I had some trouble about a recalcitrant miner who wanted to quit work” (Steinbeck 33).  This “miner” is Alex Morden.  Alex took his pick axe that he was using to mine and swung it at Captain Loft but instead of striking Loft, the pick axe struck and killed Captain Bentick.  Both of the captains happened to be Nazis.  Because someone was murdered, the man was given a death sentence.  Alex Morden was shot in the middle of town surrounded by all the people he knew.  Here comes the foreshadowing! John Steinbeck used this technique by showing the readers that once on person rebels against an enemy, more people get the courage to do the same.  This is exactly what occurred.  The townspeople became very upset that the Nazi’s killed one of their friends and tried to fight back.  I think that John Steinbeck did a very nice job. (:

"Foreshadowing." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 14 Aug. 2012. 

Steinbeck, John. Novels, 1942-1952: The Moon Is Down ; Cannery Row ; The Pearl ; East of Eden. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2001. Print.