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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—The Professor:
In Section One, Jutta and Werner find comfort in the Professor's radio show, using him as an escape from the ever-increasing precarity of their surroundings. As children, they are inclined to make up all sorts of stories about the man whose voice takes them out of their abject misery. Jutta even utilizes hyperbole to convey her image of the Professor to Werner:
“He sounds rich. And lonely. I bet he does these broadcasts from a huge mansion, big as this
whole colony, a house with a thousand rooms and a thousand servants.”Werner smiles. “Could be.”
Jutta speculates on what the Professor is like, using hyperbolic language to describe what she imagines to be his home. This is speculation as a form of escapism: both children desperately wish to transcend their environment. The professor provides them with a means to do so, via radio airwaves. Their overactive imaginations fill in for them what they don't know about him.
Werner and Jutta do not see the Professor and cannot, but in their own way, they see him. The young children can envision the Professor so clearly through language. When deprived of sight, their minds idealize him, struck by the power of his words.
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