It’s a common literary device that’s used every day. Foreshadow: refers to the hints a writer gives a reader about what’s going to happen next.Cliffhanger: a narrative device that’s used to end a story abruptly before an action or segment of the plot is concluded.Audience: the group for which an artist or writer makes a piece of art or writes.They may not always be necessary for understanding a work of literature. These are the parts of a story that occur at the end. More commonly, codas are referred to as epilogues. Others, like the conclusion of The Handmaid’s Tale, are not as clearly positive. Some codas make it clear that the characters have a happy ending, such as in the case of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They answer questions readers may have had throughout the entire narrative. It also provides a purpose to the lovers’ deaths.Įxplore William Shakespeare’s poetry and Shakespeare’s best plays.Ĭodas are important because they provide readers with the information they need to feel satisfied with the novel. Without these final lines, readers would be left wondering what happened to the feuding families. The leaders of the Montague and Capulet families hold hands and decide to make peace. and it’s revealed, through Friar Laurence, what happened to them. It occurs after the lovers’ bodies have been found, and the bulk of the story is over. These lines are spoken by Prince Escalus at the end of the play. Some shall be pardoned, and some punished, Go hence to have more talk of these sad things, The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Such is the case with the ending of Romeo and Juliet. Take a look at these lines from the end:Ī glooming peace this morning with it brings Often, the end of a play contains a summary of what’s happened and the moral the audience should’ve intuited from the action. The first codas, or epilogues, were popularized in drama. Without this technique, it would’ve required many more novels to reach this point.

When the novel ended, a great deal of time had passed between the main events and what’s described in the coda. The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. Harry’s hand was still raised in farewell.Īs Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead. The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air. Here is a quote from the coda of The Deathly Hallows: The final lines contain a great deal of nostalgia as readers as reminded of the events of the first Harry Potter novel and all that’s happened to lead the characters to this happy ending. This describes the main characters, Harry, Ron, and Hermoine, gathering at King’s Cross Station as their children board the Hogwarts Express. In the final book, in the last few pages, Rowling includes a coda. One of the best contemporary examples of a coda can be found at the end of the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J.K. While Offred’s direct fate is not revealed, it does inform readers that the world changes.Įxplore Margaret Atwood’s poetry and more of Atwood’s best books. This provides readers with a conclusion of sorts. Was she smuggled over the border of Gilead, into what was then Canada, and did she make her way thence to England? Here are a few lines from the epilogue of The Handmaid’s Tale in which the Professor speaks about Offred’s fate:Īs for the ultimate fate of our narrator, it remains obscure. One of these scholars shares Offred’s story and has transcribed it as a book “The Handmaid’s Tale.” He admits that he can’t fact-check it while also, through his language, alluding to the fact that not everything has changed. There, academics are discussing what happened in Gilead.

The scene is set 200 years after Offred’s story in a conference. The concluding pages of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are a perfect example of what an epilogue can accomplish. This could include a flash-forward or focus on a secondary character whose role becomes more important in the narrative.Įxamples of Codas in Literature The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood That is, what happened to the characters after the main events of the story are other. It may contain the necessary information for one’s understanding of the narrative, or it might contain what could be called bonus information. A coda is the conclusion of a literary work.

Meaning of coda