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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 I. The Villa
Explanation and Analysis—Literary Consumption:
In Chapter 1, as the English patient recalls his time spent in the Sahara Desert as an explorer, he recalls his deep connection to literature and history—a connection that Hana learns she shares as she sits and listens to the patient's stories. Ondaatje utilizes hyperbolic language when narrating the English patient's retelling, to highlight the intensity of the patient's literary consumption:
I have always had information like a sea in me. I am a person who if left alone in someone's home walks to the bookcase, pulls down a volume and inhales it. So history enters us. I knew maps of the sea floor, maps that depict weaknesses in the shield of the earth, charts painted on skin that contain the various routes of the Crusades.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Transported into Reading:
In Chapter 1 of The English Patient, readers discover the prominence of books, reading, and storytelling to the lives of those living at the Italian villa. To heighten Hana's sensory experience of reading, Ondaatje utilizes a hyperbole to depict the act of Hana opening a book and absorbing its story:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if waking from sleep with a heaviness caused by remembered dreams.
Related Themes:
Chapter II. In Near Ruins
Explanation and Analysis—Miles Away:
In Chapter 2, Hana becomes accustomed to watching over the English patient while he sleeps—not only because her duties as a nurse call for such, but because Hana herself cannot sleep due to trauma from the war. Having not yet heard the English patient's backstory, Hana instead imagines his sleeping body existing somewhere other than in the villa: an observation Ondaatje illustrates by using a hyperbole:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She looks in on the English patient, whose sleeping body is probably miles away in the desert, being healed by a man who continues to dip his fingers into the bowl made with the joined soles of his feet, leaning forward, pressing the dark paste against the burned face. She imagines the weight of the hand on her own cheek.
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