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"Like a Winding Sheet"


            
             Like a Winding Sheet, written by Ann Petry in 1945, is a story that begins with a black man's tough day at work, but takes a twisted turn. Johnson comes home after a hard day planning to kick his feet up and enjoy a relaxing evening at home with his wife, Mae. The ordinary idiosyncrasies Mae possesses begin to send Johnson over the edge and suddenly, something in him snaps. Johnson brutally beats his wife, quite possibly killing her. When this story takes such an unexpected turn the reader must stop to think, "How was this outcome foreshadowed in the story?" and "Was this outcome inevitable?".
             Upon first reading Like a Winding Sheet one may not catch all the hints as to what will happen to Mae in the end. In taking a closer look the reader finds that Petry foreshadows this tragic event all along. In the beginning of the story Johnson is waking up to go to work and he becomes twisted in the white sheets covering the bed. Mae laughs at this and says, "Looks like a winding sheet, a shroud- (Petry 109). This foreshadows a fatality with the allusion to a shroud, which is a cloth wrapped around a corpse. After Mae and Johnson get ready for work she happens to glance at the calendar and notices it is Friday the thirteenth. Being superstitious, Mae says she should not even go to work in fear of something bad happening to her, but Johnson insists she go (110). This shows that Mae had a bad feeling about this day all along, but she never thought her loving husband would be the one to validate her superstitions. The next time Petry uses foreshadowing is when Johnson has a bad encounter with his boss and becomes very angry. His boss scolds him for being late then makes a racial comment towards him and .
             Johnson becomes furious. "He felt a curious tingling in his fingers and he looked down at his hands. They were clenched tight, hard, ready to smash some of those small purple veins in her face" (111).


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