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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
Chapter 9: Richie
Explanation and Analysis—When I Was Thirteen:
Richie compares his own suffering at 13 to what he knows about Jojo, chewing over how sharp the divide is between their experiences of childhood. Ward uses simile, metaphor, and hyperbole in Richie’s musings about the past to express the lasting pain of everything he endured at a young age:
When I was thirteen, I knew much more than him. I knew that metal shackles could grow into the skin. I knew that leather could split flesh like butter. I knew that hunger could hurt, could scoop me hollow as a gourd, and that seeing my siblings starving could hollow out a different part of me, too. Could make my heart ricochet through my chest desperately.
The things that happened to Richie when he was Jojo’s age are almost too horrible to be repeated. However, Ward makes the reader feel the full weight of the violence and prejudice Richie and Pop experienced through the bloody, painful similes she uses here. The simile describing how blows from a leather belt could “split flesh like butter” makes the bodies of the men of Parchman seem unexpectedly vulnerable and delicate. Richie also describes himself and his siblings as being “hollowed” by starvation, like “gourds.” The hunger they were subjected to made them feel empty, but seeing their family members suffer and die also damaged their hearts. There's a general sense of exposure and feeling physically unsafe throughout this passage, as if physical and emotional pain for Richie have always been interchangeable.
The hyperbole in this passage gives the audience a heightened sense of the longstanding effects of Richie's trauma. He says that he remembers his heart “ricocheted” through his chest like a bullet might. Of course, this is an exaggeration for effect, but the hyperbole helps show how extreme the pressure on him feels in the moment. Memories like this one are brutal and intrusive. Richie’s comparison between himself and Jojo is also an abbreviated version of the daily cruelties Richie faced. Although he doesn’t want Jojo to suffer the same things that happened to him, Richie does feel resentful of Jojo’s comparatively easy childhood.
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