When Druse is deliberating over whether or not to kill the Confederate horseman, the narrator uses hyperbolic language, as seen in the following passage:
A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed foeman — seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his brave, compassionate heart.
Both of the sentences here contain different examples of hyperbole. In the first, the narrator states that “all would have been well” with Druse if he simply shot the horseman. Though readers don’t know it yet, the unnamed horseman is actually Druse’s father. As such, to claim that “all would have been well” if Druse killed him is clearly an exaggeration. Some things would have been well—such as the fact that the Union soldiers would be safe from a Confederate attack—but other things clearly would not have been, as Druse would have to reckon with the emotional anguish of ending his father’s life.
The narrator’s second use of hyperbolic language comes in the way that they describe how the horseman “seemed to look into [Druse’s] very face, into his eyes, into his brave, compassionate heart.” This is also an example of exaggerated language as Druse’s face is completely hidden by shrubbery, meaning it would be impossible for the horseman to look into it in this pointed way. It is also impossible for a person to look into another’s “brave, compassionate heart,” and yet the hyperbolic language effectively captures Druse’s emotional attachment to his father. Druse experiences his father looking at him with the same love and respect that he showed him when they parted ways to fight on opposite sides of the war. Ultimately, of course, Druse decides to kill his father, prioritizing moral duty over familial duty.
