The Moment Before the Gun Went Off

Foreshadowing is a narrative technique where the author hints at events that will happen later in the story, creating suspense and anticipation in the reader. In Nadine Gordimer’s “The Moment Before the Gun Went Off,” foreshadowing is used throughout the story to create a sense of unease and impending tragedy. The title itself is a form of foreshadowing, suggesting that a gun will be fired at some point in the story. (Anton Chekhov famously said that if a writer hangs a pistol on the way in the first act of a play, then the pistol should be fired in the following act; in this story, Gordimer puts the gun in the title.)

Gordimer also uses foreshadowing to hint at the father-son relationship between Van der Vyver and Lucas. The story reveals that Lucas was Van der Vyver’s favorite on the farm, that Van der Vyver liked to take Lucas with him to hunt, and that he had recognized the young worker’s mechanical capacity. These details, along with lines about interracial relationships—“blacks can sleep with whites… It’s not even a crime anymore” (Paragraph 10)—are breadcrumbs that lead the reader to the story’s conclusion: Lucas was Van der Vyver’s son, the product of an illegal, interracial relationship.