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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
The Loss of the Diamond: Gabriel Betteredge: Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Sucking Darkness:
The darkness of the sensory language surrounding the Shivering Sand in Period 1 Chapter 4 is a literal version of the gloomy mass of contradictory facts, dark truths, and hidden evidence in The Moonstone. Rosanna uses hyperbolic language and provocative alliteration to describe the Sand. Her intense descriptions of it also foreshadows her own death within its depths. When Rosanna and Betteredge stand looking over the Sand together in Chapter 4, Betteredge says:
I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then dimpled and quivered all over. ‘Do you know what it looks like to me?’ says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. ‘It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it – all struggling to get to the surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let’s see the sand suck it down!’
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The Loss of the Diamond: Gabriel Betteredge: Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—The Diamond:
When Betteredge describes first seeing the Moonstone diamond in Period 1, Chapter 9, Collins immediately presents the reader with powerful visual imagery of paralysis, depth, color, and intensity:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Lord bless us! it was a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover’s egg! [...] When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it. [...] It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark.
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The Discovery of the Truth: First Narrative: Miss Clack: Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Religious Hypocrites:
Collins employs hyperbolically exaggerated language in Miss Clack's diction. In doing so, he is satirizing the self-important speech of prosetylizers in his period. In Chapter 1 of Narrative 1, Miss Clack "humbly" explains that she's only helping with the Moonstone case because she's being paid:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Pecuniary remuneration is offered to me—with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich. I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Blake's cheque. My nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.
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Explanation and Analysis—Faithful Stockings:
Collins satirizes the hypocrisy of Christian fundamentalists repeatedly in this book, using Miss Clack as a mouthpiece for their pious self-interest. This character speaks in the hyperbolic and overblown tones of a fundamentalist religious tract to her reader in the first Chapter of Narrative One:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner. Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! [...] Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment’s notice!
I beg a thousand pardons. I have fallen into my Sunday-School style.
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The Discovery of the Truth: First Narrative: Miss Clack: Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Devil on Horses:
Miss Clack uses a hyperbolic biblical allusion in Narrative 1, Chapter 2. This allusion functions as a metaphor to describe some visitors arriving to accompany Rachel Verinder to a flower show. In this section Clack tells the reader that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] a thundering knock at the street door startled us all. I looked through the Window, and saw the World, the Flesh, and the Devil waiting before the house – as typified in a carriage and horses, a powdered footman, and three of the most audaciously dressed women I ever beheld in my life
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Explanation and Analysis—Heaven to Earth:
Miss Clack describes her ecstasy at Godfrey Ablewhite's presence and his "Christian" action of burning Rachel Verinder's "confession" with a simile in Chapter 2 of her First Narrative:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct to speak. I closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual self-forgetfulness, to my lips [...] Oh, the ecstasy, the pure, unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat – I hardly know on what – quite lost in my own exalted feelings. When I opened my eyes again, it was like descending from heaven to earth. There was nobody but my aunt in the room. He had gone.
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