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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Colors Glow:
This colorful, almost psychedelic passage follows Charlie’s winding thoughts as his enormous intelligence allows him to see the world in a new way. Keyes employs hyperbole and visual imagery to show Charlie’s heightened state of mind:
About my perception: everything is sharp and clear, each sensation heightened and illuminated so that reds and yellows and blues glow. [...] It is impossible to tell what proportion is memory and what exists here and now—so that a strange compound is formed of memory and reality; past and present; response to stimuli stored in my brain centers, and response to stimuli in this room. It’s as if all the things I’ve learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light.
There’s a huge volume of hyperbole in all of Charlie’s speech here, especially in the statement “everything is sharp and clear, each sensation heightened and illuminated.” The intensity of how he perceives everything around him is intended to show the effects of Charlie’s late-stage transformation after the operation. Keyes presents a scene here where “reds and yellows and blues glow,” and where Charlie’s surroundings look oversaturated and hyper-real. When he describes a “crystal universe spinning” and the way he can “see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light,” the novel gives knowledge a physical, visible form. Rather than seeing the world like a normal person, Charlie’s new intellect makes his surroundings appear dreamlike and glowing. These lines help the reader imagine thought and memory as a structure of sharp, beautiful surfaces, always moving and reflecting light. Charlie sees connections between everything in his field of vision, which gives him the sense that “all the things [he’s] learned have fused into a crystal universe.” To Charlie, all knowledge has webbed together into a single, perfect structure. He can literally see things that nobody else can.
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