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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Waiting for Winter:
Kiki sits outside her kitchen worrying about the future and thinking about how uncomfortable her children would be to see her crouched on the outside step. Here, Smith uses metaphor and hyperbole to explain how Kiki feels her family resists her aging and expects her to remain unchanged when everything else threatens to fall apart:
Is it unusual, then, to be sat thus on a raised step, half in the kitchen and half in the garden, your feet numb on the chill flagstones, waiting for winter? Kiki had been quite content for the best part of an hour, just like this, watching the pitchy wind bully the last leaves to the ground – now here was her daughter, incredulous. The older we get the more our kids seem to want us to walk in a very straight line with our arms pinned to our sides, our faces cast with the neutral expression of mannequins, not looking to the left, not looking to the right, and not – please not – waiting for winter. They must find it comforting.
Kiki isn’t really going to stay on the step until the seasons change, but the hyperbole Smith uses here helps the reader understand how desperately alone and unsure she feels. The phrase “waiting for winter” doesn’t really refer to the weather. Instead, Kiki thinks of her strange position “half in the kitchen and half in the garden” as a symbol for aging and decline. She can’t deny the fact that the future is coming, but she also resents how her children seem to want her to respond to the changes.
The image in this passage of parents walking straight “like mannequins” exaggerates how rigid and restrained Kiki believes her children expect her to be. The metaphor makes clear that Kiki feels observed and judged whenever she deviates from what her children think their mother should do or feel. She compares this posture to having arms “pinned” and face “fixed.” She feels as though they think motherhood leaves her with no room for reflection or change.
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