True Love

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which an author gives clues to the ending of the story or a major part of the character’s development by using such devices as signs, symbols, and repetition. In “True Love,” Asimov uses grammar, particularly that of the change in pronouns from “I/he” to “we” and then back to “me.” This gradual change is also done via the second literary device on this list to be discussed: repetition.

By beginning the story with “My name is Joe,” the AI narrator centers himself as a separate being from the engineer who created him. As he describes the close bond between himself and his creator, Joe narrates the story in the first-person plural, using “we” to make himself and Milton seem like friends and confidants. Again, the foreshadowing is subtle when Joe begins to talk about “we/us” as Milton gives more of his personality and identity away in exchange for the chance at love. At this point in the story, Joe blurs the line between creator and creation by telling the reader, “We always agreed; we thought so like each other” (Paragraph 32). When Joe goes back to “I/me,” the reader now understands that treachery has been there all along.