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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
Part 1, Chapter 3: Park Avenue
Explanation and Analysis—Masterpiece of Composure:
Though Mr. Barbour appears quite rumpled and unstable, Mrs. Barbour is a paragon of neatness. The novel describes her inviting presence with a dynamic hyperbole:
She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty—a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room. Like a fashion drawing come to life, she turned heads wherever she went, gliding along obliviously without appearing to notice the turbulence she created in her wake.
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Part 3, Chapter 8: The Shop-Behind-the-Shop, continued
Explanation and Analysis—The Last Touchstone:
After Larry dies in a drunk-driving accident, Theo runs away from Las Vegas, taking a Greyhound bus all the way to New York City with Popchik in tow. However, once there, Theo discovers that one of the last landmarks of his childhood has been demolished, prompting a rightly hyperbolic reaction:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I’d taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For I had thought that this last touchstone of the past, at least, would be where I’d left it. […] Even the sidewalk felt like it might break under my feet and I might drop through Fifty-Seventh Street into some pit where I never stopped falling.
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Part 4, Chapter 9: Everything of Possibility
Explanation and Analysis—A Thousand Different Ways:
Once Lucius Reeve accuses Theo of stealing The Goldfinch and threatens to expose him, Theo’s anxiety and paranoia take a dark turn. Though the painting has offered Theo comfort in times of need, as he explains with imagery and hyperbole, he understands the severity of his situation:
Unlock with LitCharts A+No good could come of keeping it. It wasn’t even as if it had done me any good or given me any pleasure. Back in Las Vegas, I’d been able to look at it whenever I wanted, when I was sick or sleepy or sad, early morning and the middle of the night, autumn, summer, changing with weather and sun. It was one thing to see a painting in a museum but to see it in all those lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark—a thing made of light, that only lived in light—was wrong in more ways than I knew how to explain.
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Part 4, Chapter 10: The Idiot
Explanation and Analysis—Extinguished By Vastness:
In the span of a few days, Theo’s life begins to disintegrate before his eyes, as he learns both that Kitsey is having an affair with Tom Cable and that Boris actually stole The Goldfinch from him all those years ago. Theo describes the emptiness he feels in the aftermath with a hyperbole:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But ever since the painting had vanished from under me I’d felt drowned and extinguished by vastness—not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm’s reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensities, connections missed, things lost and never found, and my painting swept away on that powerful current and drifting out there somewhere: a tiny fragment of spirit, faint spark bobbing on a dark sea.
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