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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
Key Examples in Three Men in a Boat
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Sickening!:
All three of the “three men” are hypochondriacs. Here, Jerome deploys hyperbole to humorously describe J.'s exaggerated panic as he self-diagnoses with various diseases. In this passage, J. is performing the 19th-century equivalent of using Web MD to diagnose a medical issue, convincing himself he’s deathly ill:
[I] read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
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Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Funeral Bell:
As the "three men" decide what to pack, J. tells an anecdote about the time he made the ill-fated decision to deliver some incredibly stinky cheese for a friend. He combines verbal irony and hyperbole to amplify the comic effect of this tall tale, where his good intentions end in disaster:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I called for the cheeses, and took them away in a cab. It was a ramshackle affair, dragged along by a knock-kneed, broken-winded somnambulist, which his owner, in a moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned a corner.
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Explanation and Analysis—My Toothbrush!:
In this passage, Jerome uses hyperbole to highlight J.'s exaggerated response to the idea of forgetting his toothbrush while packing for the boat-trip:
Unlock with LitCharts A+My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
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