When Wheeler is describing the fighting tactics of Smiley’s bulldog (named after the United States president Andrew Jackson), he uses a hyperbole, as seen in the following passage:
“And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson […] would never let on but what he was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing else […] and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j’int of his hind leg and freeze to it—not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year.”
Wheeler explains how, during a dog fight, Andrew Jackson would let his opponent dominate him before gripping onto the other dog’s leg with his mouth in a winning maneuver. The hyperbolic language comes into play with Wheeler’s description of how Andrew Jackson would hold onto his opponent’s leg for however long he needed to win, even “if it was a year.” Given that dog fights only last a few hours (at most), Wheeler is clearly using exaggerated language in order to help the narrator understand just how well Smiley trained his bulldog.
This is one of the many moments in which Wheeler highlights how looks can be deceiving—while Andrew Jackson makes it seem like he is being dominated in his fights, he is actually skillfully waiting for his opponents to underestimate him before he attacks (as Smiley trained him to do).
When trying to explain to the narrator the extreme nature of Smiley’s gambling habit, Wheeler uses hyperbolic language, as seen in the following passage:
“If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road […] Why, it never made no difference to him—he’d bet on any thing—the dangdest feller.”
Here, Wheeler describes how, if Smiley saw a bug walking along the ground, he would try to make a bet with the nearest person about where the bug was going—his gambling habit is that intense. Wheeler goes on to hyperbolically describe how Smiley would “foller that straddle-bug to Mexico” if he had to and how he was willing to “bet on any thing.” Given that the story is set in Northern California—around 500 miles from the Mexican border—Wheeler is clearly exaggerating about Smiley being willing to travel there. Likewise, the notion that Smiley could bet on “any thing” is likely not the literal truth, but a hyperbolic exaggeration meant to help the narrator understand how compulsively and constantly Smiley would make bets.
The first hyperbole here is especially significant because it suggests that, while Smiley clearly did not have control over his gambling habit, he never lost his integrity. The idea that he would follow a bug 500 miles south to make sure that he won the bet fairly demonstrates that being a gambler does not make a person immoral—cheating does.
