How it Serves as Effective Foreshadowing for the Progression of the Story (SPOILERS AHEAD)
The best kind of foreshadowing is always the kind that is so subtle, you never realize that it was significant until you analyze the piece of media further and put the pieces together in a dramatic “aha!” moment. Some franchises are full of these fun little details that become shockingly clear if you look even two seconds longer than you did originally. One of my favorite examples of these foreshadowing details is through song choice. Currently, my hyper-fixation for this occurs in both the adaptation and game play of The Last of Us 2, however the foreshadowing is not currently as explicitly clear in the show as the game, due to the story for the second part being split into two seasons. So fans, be warned, there are spoilers ahead in this article. I urge you to finish the game play, or wait until the next season releases before you proceed further!!
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I met Little Sadie, and I shot her down
Went back home, jumped into bed
.44 pistol under my head
The scene in which this foreshadowing takes place is the party scene in Jackson, Wyoming where the main character, Ellie, is watching her friend Dina dancing with the other members of the town. In the background, the song “Little Sadie” by the band Crooked Still plays as the characters dance around the room. At first, I perceived the song to be a really catchy line dance song, one of those ear worms that play on a loop in your head afterwards, but the kind that you’re never really upset about hearing. Following this cut scene, when I had decided I wanted to take a break from the game, I searched for the song on Apple Music and immediately downloaded it. Only when I had done this, and read through the lyrics for the song, did I realize why Naughty Dog (the developer of TLOU 1 and 2) had chosen that specific song to play in this scene.
Before I get into the lyrics for the song that are relevant to the story, it’s important to note that this scene occurs at the very beginning of the game, as well as towards the end of it. Before any conflict or major plot points have developed, and afterwards, as a flashback scene after the characters have gone through their major plots and character buildings. This detail is very important to why the song is so significant.
Let’s get into the lyrics of the song. The song goes through the story of a man, who had one night gone out and murdered someone called “Little Sadie” (hence the name of the song!). The lyrics describe the man going out on a round, finding the girl, and shooting her down, before heading home to bed, putting the pistol he used under the pillow before he slept. The next morning, he awoke to find his town burying the girl, and he ran away from the scene, but not quickly enough and the police (?) overtook him in the town of Jericho. Upon finding him, they asked him if he was the one who had committed the murder, and he replied that he had murdered Little Sadie in both the first and second degrees, and asked the Sheriff if he had any papers he had to read to him.
He was then tried, and found guilty, and sentenced to 41 years in prison to wear the “ball and stripes,” which references popular cartoon drawings of prisoners. The message of the song is that you cannot escape the consequences of your actions, and also highlights themes of guilt, revenge, and especially violence. These are all reflective of the major themes that we see throughout the franchise, specifically in relation to Joel, Ellie, and Abby’s story lines, despite whatever their rationale for such actions might’ve been, the game shows us that they all receive consequences for them, both in small and big ways.
Through Joel’s character specifically we can see the meaning of the song. His decision to save Ellie from the Fireflies, who would’ve killed her in their efforts to create a cure to stop the spread of Infected across the world due to her immunity created during birth, creates a cascade of consequences. Upon realizing what Ellie’s fate would be (previously thinking that she would be the subject of experiments for a cure, but not killed for the cure), Joel goes through the Firefly hospital, killing all those in his way, before killing the doctor who would’ve performed the operation on Ellie, and breaking his way back out of the hospital, fleeing the scene of the crime.
The murder of the doctor in particular is important for the story, since in the second game it’s revealed to be Abby’s father. This detail fuels Abby’s desire for vengeance, leading to her tracking down and murdering Joel in retaliation for his actions against her father. Her actions, of course, are not without their own consequences. As she tortured Joel, Ellie broke into the house where Abby had Joel trapped, and was present for the murder of the man who acted as her father, adding to the violent cycle the characters continue to find themselves in. In turn, Ellie sought vengeance against Abby and tracked her down to Seattle, where she murdered Abby’s friends as she tried to find her in Seattle.
This is a repeating theme throughout the games, and assumedly the show, though that is still in production for the second leg of the game (season 3). The song emphasizes the brutal cycle of revenge that the major characters in this franchise, Joel, Ellie, and Abby, and even the smaller characters, such as Lex or Tommy, go through as they continue to make mistakes in their overarching story lines. The song, now haunting, really represents the core of humanity, the good, the bad, the ugly, in a very subtle manner that would otherwise have gone unnoticed until I read the lyrics and realized that what I thought was a catchy line dance song, was actually representative of so much more.
Who is “Little Sadie” in these games? Is it Ellie? Abby? Joel? Or do they all take turns being the victim and the murderer. Humanity is not black and white, but shades of grey, that The Last of Us in particular, does an exemplary job at portraying that. You cannot root for one character without realizing the motivations behind the other character’s actions. The passing along of narration from Joel to Ellie and eventually to Abby create an incredibly emotional roller coaster of emotions for the player or the watcher (whichever format you’re getting the story from). The sad part is that at the end of the day, you realize all of these characters are trading their roles in each other’s story. Joel was the murder to Abby’s father’s “Little Sadie,” and Abby the murderer to Ellie’s “Little Sadie.”
Foreshadowing, subtle when it occurs, and eventually becoming starkly apparent in the aftermath, creating high emotions and conflicted feelings in regards to the story line. The Last of Us is one of the most incredibly complex, intriguing, and representative examples of humanity that I have seen portrayed in the media. The jaunty jive of the Crooked Still’s song haunts the narrative as the characters dance in Jackson, Wyoming, emphasizing the tension between the peaceful dance scene and the inevitable brutal reality that is to come.
I met Little Sadie, and I shot her down
Went back home, jumped into bed
.44 pistol under my head