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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Law and Morality:
Chapter 8 documents several of Cathy's sins as a young child, including the murder and immolation of her parents. Cathy herself disappears after the murder, leaving the police to scramble for a scapegoat to charge with her crimes. The police do indeed choose a man—one with some kind of intellectual disability, such that he confesses to anything the police ask him about. After the trial, the judge scolds the police for this, using both hyperbole and Biblical allusion to explain why the officer's actions were wrong:
"He would have admitted climbing the golden stairs and cutting Saint Peter's throat with a bowling ball," the judge said. "Be more careful, Mike. The law was designed to save, not to destroy."
In the above passage, the judge uses hyperbole to exaggerate what the "feeble-minded" man would theoretically admit to, devising an outrageously unrealistic scenario to emphasize this man's vulnerability to manipulation. In this scenario, the judge alludes to Christian traditions, referencing the "golden stairs" of heaven and "Saint Peter," who is traditionally believed to guard heaven's gates. While it is outrageous to imagine the "feeble-minded" man on trial climbing the staircase to heaven and murdering Saint Peter, it is even more outrageous to picture him cutting the saint's throat with a dull bowling ball.
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