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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Beauty and Elegance:
As Cass and Vivaldo silently ride an elevator on their way to Rufus’s funeral, the author uses hyperbole to show Vivaldo’s dire state:
She was struck by his panic and sorrow; without a word, she put on her dark coat and put her hand in his; and they rode down in the elevator in silence. She watched him in the elevator mirror. Sorrow became him. He was reduced to his beauty and elegance—as bones, after a long illness, come forward through the flesh.
Vivaldo is absolutely emotionally destroyed by Rufus’s death, and Baldwin hammers this home by describing Rufus's body as dying in sympathy. The simile in this passage—where bones poke through flesh when a corpse decomposes—is intended to show the depth of Vivaldo’s sorrow. Cass observes that Vivaldo's pain has literally stripped the flesh from his body, leaving nothing but his raw, exposed self. His usual composure has vanished and he's visibly diminished by the weight of his loss. The change is not entirely a bad one, however: Cass also muses that “sorrow became him.” This phrase has a double meaning. He has both “become sorrow” entirely, as it has totally consumed him, and he has had his physical appearance improved by sorrow. His “reduction” has exposed the bones in his face in a way that makes them look elegant and beautiful.
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