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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 3
Explanation and Analysis—Rails Go Forever:
Dolly’s father told her stories about the railroads that made her love and romanticize them as a child. The narrator employs simile and flashback in this passage to show how Dolly once saw the railway tracks as a primary source of connection for everyone in the entire world:
Those rails go all over the world. They go forever. And she felt it was true. It was like they were electric with all knowledge, all places, all people.
The flashback brings the reader into a moment in Dolly’s childhood when she stood by the tracks and imagined their reach stretching endlessly. When she says “they go forever,” it shows how large and mysterious the world felt to her childish gaze. Here, Winton captures the way children often exaggerate the size or meaning of ordinary things. For Dolly, the rails connect every place in the universe with her hometown. Her young mind treats them as a pathway to everything important in the world she doesn’t yet know or understand.
The simile “like they were electric with all knowledge, all places, all people” also works to turn the steel rails into something alive and charged. Instead of being inert metal, this simile compares them to wires full of energy. They are glowing with purpose, which makes them feel to Dolly as though they might hold all the world’s data and its stories inside them. In her eyes, the rails contain within them the key to accessing the entire map of life. Winton uses this memory to highlight Dolly’s sense of childhood hopefulness and curiosity. It’s very different from the disillusionment and sense of entrapment she feels as an adult.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Good and Evil:
Having seen that the Nedlands Monster was just a man after all, Quick feels let down and disillusioned about his own moral values. The situational irony and hyperbole in this passage reveal Quick’s struggle to accept moral ambiguity when he’s always believed strongly in the forces of good:
‘So you’ve given away the old good and evil?’ asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.
‘No. No. I’ll stay a cop. But it’s not us and them anymore. It’s us and us and us. It’s always us. That’s what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there’s no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.’
The situational irony in this section comes from the gap between Quick’s expectations and the reality he finds in his work. Having grown up in the Lamb family, he has been trained to uphold justice and self-sacrifice. He becomes a police officer because he wants to be on the side of moral goodness and protect what’s right. However, after seeing the Monster in real life, Quick discovers that he was just a man after all. This forces him to see that the world doesn’t divide neatly into heroes and villains, and that there is no separate category of "evil" to which the bad belong. The “monsters” he expected to chase as a police officer do not exist. Instead, he begins to see himself in the people he arrests. Quick’s disappointment comes from both the anticlimax of the capture and the loss of the heroic purpose he once believed in. Serial killers are just people, as he tells Rose. Now that he knows that, he can’t see life as “us” (the good) and “them” (the bad) anymore. It’s just “us,” which is “funny, but it hurts.”
The hyperbole in “It’s us and us and us. It’s always us” stretches this sameness to an extreme. The repetition here piles weight onto Quick’s realization that there are no real differences between criminals and cops. The reader sees how frustrated Quick is as he tries to explain how painful it is to have to take on this truth, given his upbringing. When he tells Rose that “there’s no monsters,” he’s saying that he and the people he arrests are far more similar than he would previously have been able to understand.
Related Themes:
