In the short story Videotape, Don DeLillo utilizes sever creative writing styles in order to portray his somewhat twisted story about a little girl accidentally videotaping a man being shot and killed in his car. DeLillo's meaning and true point behind writing this story was that nothing can be predicted and that all things happen because of "forces beyond your control" (DeLillo, 61). Several instances throughout the story DeLillo uses the repetition technique through repeating exact phrases and repeating structure and ideas to show his audience the true meaning of his story. DeLillo also utilizes foreshadowing and word choice in the beginning of his story in order to create an ominous mood for the story. The author also juxtaposes two main ideas throughout the story in order to portray his message. To portray the true meaning that nothing in life can be predicted and everything is unexpected DeLillo utilizes repetition of words and structure, foreshadowing and word choice, and juxtaposition.DeLillo wrote this story in order to in a way prove to his audience that there is a "chance quality" in every encounter (DeLillo, 61). DeLillo states that there are "lines of intersection that cut through history and logic and every reasonable layer of human expectation", DeLillo is saying that due to the chance factor and the forces beyond human control, no matter how much one expects something to happen there is always a possibility that it will not happen (DeLillo, 61). The main object of this story is a videotape, this is what the author refers to repeatedly throughout the story. In the video an ordinary looking man is driving a car and waves at the camera and the little girl holding the camera, then as the video progresses the man is shot in the head by a drive-by shooter in the other lane. Surely when the average American man gets in the car to go somewhere he does not expect to be shot in the head and killed, at least not on the drive there. This video that is reoccurring throughout the entire story is the essence of what the author's main point of this piece is, which is to show his audience that there is always the aspect of chance. The author of Videotape, Don DeLillo, utilized the literary technique of repetition in order to draw his audience in and also in order to reiterate ideas that were meant to be notice by his audience. DeLillo's first use of repetition comes when he states "the car approaches briefly, then falls back" (DeLillo, 60), and then he later repeats it on the next page when he says "it approaches briefly, then falls back" (DeLillo, 61). When the author first states that the car approaches and then falls back he has not yet set up the context of the videotape yet so the reader just assumes that the driver of the car is alive in the video when the car approaches and falls back. Later when DeLillo repeats that the car approaches and then falls back it is in a much different, harsher context, "Now here is where he gets it. You see him jolted then he seizes up and falls toward the door It approaches briefly, then falls back", in this context the man driving the car has just been shot in the head and died instantly (DeLillo, 61). By utilizing repetition of exact phrases the author is furthering his point of the story that nothing can be predicted, the reader would have simply predicted from reading that the car approaches briefly and then slows down again that the driver was doing this purposefully but later learns that the driver was actually dead and involuntarily doing this because of the "quality of chance" (DeLillo, 61).

The author, DeLillo also used repetition of writing structure. On the second page of the short story DeLillo writes a paragraph of context and then two lines describing the footage of the videotape. The first time that DeLillo describes the videotape in the two line format he states "It shows a man in a sport shirt at the wheel of his car. There is nothing else to see. The car approaches briefly, then falls back" as if once DeLillo states "there is nothing else to see" that he is finished explaining the videotape, but he is not because he goes on to use this two line format several more times, again unexpected (DeLillo, 60). It is not that DeLillo is simply describing more and more of the scene in the video but instead he is getting more and more in depth into the description of the man as if he wants the audience to believe that the storyteller has some sort of fascination with the man driving the car. DeLillo gets so specific by the end of these two-line description that by the last one he is making assumptions about the man saying that he is "a nice guy in his forties" as if the storyteller wishes to know this man or does in fact know this man. The author repeats these two-lined descriptions in order to build a character in the readers mind and make the reader like him to make what comes next in the video even more unpredictable. 

The author uses foreshadowing by using a double entendre in order to point to a dark plot twist later on in the story. Twice in the story, before it is known to the audience that the man in the video is shot, DeLillo uses the word "shoot" meaning the word in the sense of a video recorder shooting footage. The author first states "[children] will shoot you sitting on the pot if they can manage a suitable vantage", meaning that a child would film a person using the restroom if they wanted to, this example also aids the idea that one does not expect to be filmed while using the restroom.

Lastly DeLillo juxtaposes two completely opposite ideas throughout the entire story in order to further his point of unpredictability. DeLillo juxtaposes the innocence of a child with the brutality of death. When thinking of the innocence of a child who loves life because life is all she has ever known, the last place that one's mind wanders is the painfully brutal idea of not only death but murder, one life taken away by another life. This is DeLillo's ultimate way of stating to his audience that there is no way to predict anything in life, by comparing side by side, an innocent new life and a brutal end to life.

Don DeLillo author of Videotape shows readers that nothing in life can be predicted and nothing in life is a definite. DeLillo does this through repetition of words and phrases, foreshadowing and word selection, and the juxtaposition of two opposite ideas. 

