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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
Part 1, Chapter 3: Park Avenue
Explanation and Analysis—Masterpiece of Composure:
Though Mr. Barbour appears quite rumpled and unstable, Mrs. Barbour is a paragon of neatness. The novel describes her inviting presence with a dynamic hyperbole:
She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty—a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room. Like a fashion drawing come to life, she turned heads wherever she went, gliding along obliviously without appearing to notice the turbulence she created in her wake.
Mrs. Barbour is the epitome of an upscale Manhattanite mother; her composure and poise are her most admirable character traits, along with her ability to plan dinner parties and decorate her apartment with exquisite taste. Theo’s scientific hyperbole—that Mrs. Barbour’s presence causes molecules to realign around her—demonstrates how he views her as strikingly precise and reserved.
Though Theo does not find Mrs. Barbour particularly warm in those early days at the Park Avenue apartment, Mrs. Barbour does exhibit a kind and protective demeanor. She protects Theo from overly invasive investigators and reporters. She dutifully responds to visitors who offer their condolences, careful not to overwhelm Theo in such a vulnerable period of his life.
Mrs. Barbour plays a maternal role in Theo’s teenage and adult life; however, she is quite the opposite of Theo’s mother. Theo describes Audrey as colorful and expressive, an artist and a model, someone who had Chinese takeout in her fridge on any given day. In contrast, Mrs. Barbour runs a strict household in a spacious and luxurious apartment on Park Avenue. She is always put-together and ready to host, emanating sangfroid at every snag and corner.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 8: The Shop-Behind-the-Shop, continued
Explanation and Analysis—The Last Touchstone:
After Larry dies in a drunk-driving accident, Theo runs away from Las Vegas, taking a Greyhound bus all the way to New York City with Popchik in tow. However, once there, Theo discovers that one of the last landmarks of his childhood has been demolished, prompting a rightly hyperbolic reaction:
And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I’d taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For I had thought that this last touchstone of the past, at least, would be where I’d left it. […] Even the sidewalk felt like it might break under my feet and I might drop through Fifty-Seventh Street into some pit where I never stopped falling.
Without Audrey’s apartment and her possessions, Theo no longer has any ties to his previous life in New York. When he returns after his stint in Las Vegas with Larry, Theo goes directly to Hobart and Blackwell to find Hobie. The antique store becomes a haven for Theo, a place where he can escape the city crowds and feel close to his mother again. After all, Theo claims that Audrey would have loved Hobie’s antique collections, each piece touched by human hands and history.
Theo still looks for his mother, though, in city landmarks and places where they created memories together. One day, as Theo walks by his old apartment building, hoping to see José or Goldie, he discovers that the whole building has been nearly demolished. This unfamiliar site—the “last touchstone of the past”—strips away the final, tangible connection that Theo had to his mother. What seems like a normal change to the construction workers is a momentous and devastating shift for Theo, one that officially completes the erasure of his old life.
The city, which once felt like home, suddenly feels foreign, its pillars of familiarity crashing to the ground. Previously grounded by the routine of New York City, Theo now feels like the sidewalk beneath his feet might break apart and drag him under. He is untethered, adrift in the streets of the city without a past or a future.
Related Themes:
Part 4, Chapter 9: Everything of Possibility
Explanation and Analysis—A Thousand Different Ways:
Once Lucius Reeve accuses Theo of stealing The Goldfinch and threatens to expose him, Theo’s anxiety and paranoia take a dark turn. Though the painting has offered Theo comfort in times of need, as he explains with imagery and hyperbole, he understands the severity of his situation:
No good could come of keeping it. It wasn’t even as if it had done me any good or given me any pleasure. Back in Las Vegas, I’d been able to look at it whenever I wanted, when I was sick or sleepy or sad, early morning and the middle of the night, autumn, summer, changing with weather and sun. It was one thing to see a painting in a museum but to see it in all those lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark—a thing made of light, that only lived in light—was wrong in more ways than I knew how to explain.
To Theo, The Goldfinch is a masterpiece not for its subject matter and skill of brushstroke, but instead for its life and light, which come alive in “a thousand different ways.” Although Theo admits the impact of seeing The Goldfinch under museum lights in a gallery, where every angle is perfectly shown to the viewer, his relationship with the small painting deepened elsewhere. By taking the 17th-century masterpiece with him to Las Vegas, where he could pull it out from behind his headboard at any time, Theo allowed the art to wrap around and respond to his changing emotions and the fickle desert weather.
Seeing a painting in a museum on a particular day of the year, when a person is feeling a certain way, will be a resonant experience. However, being able to return to that piece of art over and over again in the different lights of life will undoubtedly be transformative.
It may be that Theo hyperbolizes the countless ways he saw The Goldfinch in Las Vegas, but it is equally possible that his experience was truly that immense.
Related Themes:
Part 4, Chapter 10: The Idiot
Explanation and Analysis—Extinguished By Vastness:
In the span of a few days, Theo’s life begins to disintegrate before his eyes, as he learns both that Kitsey is having an affair with Tom Cable and that Boris actually stole The Goldfinch from him all those years ago. Theo describes the emptiness he feels in the aftermath with a hyperbole:
But ever since the painting had vanished from under me I’d felt drowned and extinguished by vastness—not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm’s reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensities, connections missed, things lost and never found, and my painting swept away on that powerful current and drifting out there somewhere: a tiny fragment of spirit, faint spark bobbing on a dark sea.
Since the museum attack that fateful April morning, Theo’s life has been defined by The Goldfinch. Although Theo kept the painting hidden in various locations and told no one about his crime, the painting tethered him, reminding him not only of Audrey but also of the fragility of life. The Goldfinch gives Theo a sense of purpose and a ground on which he can stand. Oddly enough, for nearly a decade, Theo lives under the pretense that The Goldfinch is in his storage unit, its canvas and colors only a short drive away. Just the knowledge that the masterpiece—the painting that has borne witness to his wild and rocky life—is in Theo’s possession steadies him.
When Theo learns that he has not had The Goldfinch in many years, he becomes untethered—a dangerous state for someone who already has an addiction to opiates and alcohol. Somehow, a painting barely larger than an average sheet of paper has become an anchor for Theo in a “vast and unknowable” world full of people and places we can never completely know. In the aftermath of the attack, when Theo was physically untethered from a home and family, The Goldfinch was his saving grace. The little painting was the glue holding Theo’s life together and a keepsake reminding him of his origins. So, without the painting, Theo’s entire world implodes into a vast nothingness that feels impassable and unknowable. His hyperbolic reaction demonstrates Theo’s perhaps unhealthy relationship with the painting, particularly in how its loss extinguishes the life and drive within him.
Related Themes:
