After Scully persuades the Swede to stay at the hotel, the two have supper with the other guests. The narrator uses hyperbole in this scene to capture the Swede’s increasingly intense energy and behavior, as seen in the following passage:
The Swede domineered the whole feast, and he gave it the appearance of a cruel bacchanal. He seemed to have grown suddenly taller; he gazed, brutally disdainful, into every face. His voice rang through the room. Once when he jabbed out harpoon-fashion with his fork to pinion a biscuit, the weapon nearly impaled the hand of the Easterner, which had been stretched quietly out for the same biscuit.
There are several examples of hyperbole in this passage. First, when the narrator describes how the Swede’s “domineering” energy gave the feast “the appearance of a cruel bacchanal,” they are clearly exaggerating. A “bacchanal” is a specific kind of ritualized gathering full of extreme drunkenness and revelry, a term mostly used to describe festivities thrown by Bacchus (or Dionysus), the Greco-Roman god of wine and ecstasy.
The narrator goes on to state that the Swede “seemed to have grown suddenly taller,” a hyperbolic impossibility that nonetheless communicates the man’s dominating energy. The description of the Swede “nearly impal[ing]” the Easterner’s hand with a fork is likewise an exaggeration meant to capture the man’s out-of-control energy. This is one of the many moments in which the Swede covers up his underlying anxiety (about traveling alone in the West) by acting domineering. Ultimately, this kind of aggressive posturing leads to his death.
