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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Emily Dickinson:
When Dean French tells Claire that she’s going to have to admit Zora to her poetry class, Claire absolutely rails against the idea. She uses hyperbole to convey her frustration at the pressure from the university and to exaggerate Zora’s lack of talent.
Claire laughed. ‘Jack, Zora Belsey couldn’t write a poem if Emily Dickinson herself rolled out of her grave, put a gun to the girl’s head and demanded one. She’s simply untalented in this area. She refuses to read poetry – and all I get from her are pages from her journal aligned down the left-hand margin. I’ve got a hundred and twenty talented students applying for eighteen places.'
Claire’s class is very difficult to get into, and Claire believes that Zora’s using Claire’s affair with Howard to bully Claire into admitting her. Her claim that even Emily Dickinson threatening Zora “at gunpoint” could not induce her to produce a poem stretches the situation beyond all plausibility. The reference to Dickinson, one of the most iconic poets in American literature, is intended to point out the big difference between poetic greatness and what Claire sees as Zora’s total lack of talent. The image of Dickinson rising from the grave with a weapon creates an absurd, violent scenario for Dean French. By claiming that Zora submits nothing more than left-aligned journal entries, Claire is implying that her work is both technically and artistically lacking.
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