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Definition of Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements... read full definition
Pages 124-156
Explanation and Analysis—Darkness Implacable:
Apocalypse—not to mention its aftermath—is difficult to imagine. As a result, The Road must often rely on hyperbole to communicate the experience of it. While traveling through one deserted town after another, the man believes he has come face to face with total despair:
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
These descriptions are hyperbolic—they frame reality in superlative terms. The “crushing black vacuum of the universe” and “darkness implacable” are exaggerated language and would seem to tend towards the dramatic. Yet the novel negotiates the line between exaggeration and reality. Having never experienced this world themselves, the reader cannot judge the accuracy of this hyperbole. What might otherwise seem unreliably overblown ends up reinforcing the unimaginable scale of cruelty in this world. The post-apocalyptic world, as these hyperboles suggest, is perhaps so foreign that the reader simply cannot fathom it; they must instead take these figurative terms for granted. Hyperboles call attention to the setting’s status as fiction but also something that transcends fiction.
Related Themes:
