When Jim overhears the townspeople gossiping about and speaking ill of Harvey at his own funeral, he goes on a tirade about the town’s twisted value system, using a hyperbole in the process:
“Why did Bill Merrit’s son die of the shakes in a saloon in Omaha? Why was Mr. Thomas’s son, here, shot in a gambling-house? Why did young Adams burn his mill to beat the insurance companies and go to the pen?”
The lawyer paused and unfolded his arms, laying one clenched fist quietly on the table. “I’ll tell you why. Because you drummed nothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they wore knickerbockers.”
Here, Jim asks a series of rhetorical questions about the fates of several young men in Sand City so as to make his point that the older generation of townspeople “drummed nothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they wore knickerbockers.” This is clearly exaggerated, hyperbolic language—it is not possible that the only lessons the older townsfolk taught their children from the time they were young were about money and dishonest behavior (“knavery”).
Still, Jim’s hyperbole adds to an important critique he is making of the town, specifically that because the older generation prized money over all else, their children ended up anxious and unhappy gamblers and criminals. Jim's friend Harvey, of course, escaped this fate and became a successful artist in his own right, but only because he left Sand City for the East Coast and never looked back.
When Jim explains to Steavens what Harvey’s mother and childhood were like, he uses a series of hyperboles:
“The old woman is a fury; there never was anybody like her. She made Harvey’s life a hell for him when he lived at home; he was so sick ashamed of it. I never could see how he kept himself sweet […] That is the eternal wonder of it, anyway; that it can come even from such a dung heap as this,” the lawyer cried, with a sweeping gesture which seemed to indicate much more than the four walls within which they stood.
Here, the narrator uses hyperbolic language to capture just how challenging Harvey’s growing up experience was, exaggeratedly stating that “there never was anybody” like Harvey’s mother and that she made “Harvey’s life a hell for him.” In Jim’s final hyperbole, he compares Harvey’s home to “a dung heap,” expressing confusion about how the artist was able to remain so “sweet” despite coming from such an abusive family.
In addition to being a commentary on Harvey’s unhealthy family dynamics, Jim’s statement about how Harvey emerged from “a dung heap” suggests that he views the entire town of Sand City, Kansas negatively as well. As Jim states even more explicitly later in the story, he regrets that he got stuck in this frontier town and was proud of Harvey for moving somewhere that valued him for the person he was and nurtured his creative sensibilities.
