Hyperbole

Etymology and Meanings of Literary Device Hyperbole

Etymologically, the term hyperbole is a derivative of a Greek term, huperbole that entered the Latin language as hyperbola. It entered the English language during the Middle Ages and turned into hyperbole that means to exaggerate.

Literally, it means to throw beyond. There was also a Greek verb of hyperbola that was hyperballein which also means throw beyond, or over something. In other words, the term has similar meanings in both Greek and Latin languages.

Grammatically, it is a noun used as a singular having hyperboles as its plural.

Definition of Literary Device Hyperbole

In literature, hyperbole is a term used to exaggerate something. However, it is mostly used in rhetoric, poetry, and oratory to emphasize something or evoke strong feelings about something.

It is a figure of speech that means not to take something literally and exaggerate things to evoke a strong response from the readers or the audience.

Common Examples of Hyperbole

1. He could have wept buckets over her death.
2. He is so agile that he could have jumped rivers to reach his home.
3. My grandfather is ages old now.
4. You must have run millions of miles to reach him.
5. He is a matchstick wrestler.
6. He is as tall as a bamboo.
7. His color exceeds bitumen in blackness.
8. The night was scaring him.

Literary Examples of Hyperbole

Example # 1

From The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.

This sentence occurs in The Catcher in the Rye, a phenomenal novel by Salinger. Holden Caulfield thinks about his parents that had they known his school behavior, they would have had two hemorrhages which do not seem possible. He has rather exaggerated their likely shock at the situation in which he has put himself in.

Example # 2

From “Air and Angels” by John Donne

Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee,

Before I knew thy face or name;

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame

Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be;

         Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.

These verses occur in the poem “Air and Angels” written by a popular metaphysical poet, John Donne. Almost every other verse exaggerates things that are not possible in the world. Donne cannot love a person twice or thrice nor do the angles come to intensify their love. Therefore, this is merely an exaggeration of feelings.

Example # 3

From “The Anniversary” by John Donne

All Kings, and all their favourites,

         All glory of honours, beauties, wits,

    The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,

    Is elder by a year now than it was

    When thou and I first one another saw:

    All other things to their destruction draw,

         Only our love hath no decay;

    This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,

    Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

These verses have been borrowed from the poem of John Donne, “The Anniversary.” Every other verse exaggerates things to the extreme. Instead of enjoying their own festivity and counting time, he argues that the sun has gone older and that other things have witnessed decay but their love is still fresh. Almost every other conceit he has used in this poem is a hyperbole.

Example # 4

From Hamlet by William Shakespeare

What a piece of work is man…how like an apprehension, how like a god; the beauty of the world…. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

These lines occur in the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. He has exaggerated man, equating him to god and the entire beauty of the world. This exaggeration, then, ends on the point that he (man) is a quintessence of dust. This is a beautiful hyperbole he has used in Hamlet.

Example # 5

From Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Two men stood directly in front of me, one speaking with intense earnestness. “. . . and Johnson hit Jeffries at an angle of 45 degrees from his lower left lateral incisor, producing an instantaneous blocking of his entire thalamic rine, frosting it over like the freezing unit of a refrigerator, thus shattering his autonomous nervous system and rocking the big brick-laying creampuff with extreme hyperspasmic muscular tremors.

This passage occurs in the novel, Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. Johnson is thrashing Jeffries but it does not occur in such a precise manner as he is stating. Nobody sees the degree of the angel when hitting or nobody makes another one frosty like a refrigerator. These are merely exaggerations. Therefore, these are beautiful hyperboles Ellison has used.

How to Create Hyperboles

1. Plan using an idea such as light.
2. Create a similarity between two ideas such as the brightness of the light.
3. Use a simile such as the light was as bright as the sun itself.
4. Use it in descriptive writing through a character or a third-person narrator.
5. A hyperbole must be relevant, direct, clear, outlandish, or outrageous, and deliberate.

Benefits of Using Hyperbole

1. It leads to the clarity of ideas.
2. It enhances the impact of the description.
3. It widens readers’ imagination.
4. It makes readers aware of the enormity of situations or the reality of things

Literary Device Hyperbole in Literary Theory

1. As hyperbole is an essential element of figurative language, obviously it is important when taking a formalistic literary review of a poem, story, or novel. Also, when it involves the rhetoric of fiction, it means that hyperbole is part of the rhetoric. Therefore, hyperbole helps readers understand the real message of the writing when analyzed through formalism.
2. Hyperbole also helps in indigenous critical theory and race critical theory when a piece of art or literature is analyzed from this perspective. The reason is that indigenous linguistic features and indigenous discourse often employ hyperboles to intensify the feelings of oppression and suppression.
3. Hyperbole is the main element of rhetoric and psycholinguistics. The reason is that rhetoric means to persuade and convince the people about the just or unjust case in the political realm. As every fiction is a political discourse in one or the other way, it is part of rhetoric and hence hyperbole is an essential part of it. Therefore, when doing a rhetorical analysis or doing analysis from a psycholinguistic point of view, it is important to review the role of hyperbole in such writings.

Suggested Readings

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction To Literary And Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2020. Print.

Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. Literature, Criticism, and Theory. Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2004. Print.

Mora, Laura Cano. “All Or Nothing: A Semantic Analysis of Hyperbole.” Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 4.1 (2009): 25-35. Thompson, Michael, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky. Cultural Theory. Routledge, 2018. Print.