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Definition of Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements... read full definition
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Too Much Color:
When Antoinette and the husband get married, he's only spent a month in Jamaica—three weeks of which he was bedridden with a fever. On the way up to Granbois, as he acquaints himself with the landscape around him, he feels overwhelmed by the vivid colors, lush vegetation, and height of the mountains. He repeatedly draws on hyperbole in descriptions of his surroundings, which underlines his alienation and aversion.
As the road climbs, he thinks to himself that the place is "not only wild but menacing." Even if they are out in the open, he feels claustrophobic: "Those hills would close in on you."
Everything is too much blue, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger.
Coming from England, the husband is not accustomed to so many bright colors in nature. Nevertheless, this description is hyperbolic. The reader is not supposed to literally visualize "everything" as "too much blue." Rather, the reader's takeaway should be that the husband feels overstimulated by the landscape. As he takes in the scenery, the hyperbolic edge in his narration emphasizes the sensory intensity of taking in a brand new place.
The husband's depletion is related to his ambivalence about Antoinette. Like his surroundings, his new wife feels foreign and excessive. Rather than responding with fascination or curiosity to this unfamiliarity, the husband grows fatigued and skeptical. The landscape is different from what he's used to, and he feels repelled by it. Similarly, because Antoinette doesn't behave in the way he wants women to behave, he finds it difficult to love her. Even as the honeymoon progresses, she remains a stranger to him: "a stranger who did not think or feel as I did."
The husband is not the only character or narrator who encounters the landscape through a hyperbolic filter. In fact, his negative hyperbole vis-à-vis the landscape may be a response to Antoinette's positive hyperbole when talking about the nature she so cherishes. At one point, she tells him that she loves Granbois "more than anywhere in the world. As if it were a person. More than a person." Later, when Antoinette tells the husband about Coulibri and the gardens of her childhood, she says that her family was "alone in the most beautiful place in the world" and that "all the flowers in the world were in our garden."
Because he feels insecure in his situation, his surroundings feel inhospitable. Thus, rather than feeling delighted by it, he feels drained by the colorful beauty around him. Antoinette's enthusiastic familiarity with the nature intensifies the husband's alienation, and contributes to the distance between the two. He's put off by her love of the place. The more she finds it beautiful, the more he finds it excessive and inhospitable.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Dislike and Hatred:
As they leave Granbois at the end of the second part, the husband lists out everything he dislikes—and even hates—about the setting of his honeymoon. This hyperbole mirrors his exaggerated description of the scenery during his arrival, once again illustrating his alienation and emptiness. Embittered by the place's abiding unfamiliarity, he finds everything about it excessive and disturbing.
As Antoinette shares an earnest and tender farewell with Granbois and Baptiste, the husband lists out everything he dislikes about the people he's leaving behind.
I was tired of these people. I disliked their laughter and their tears, their flattery and envy, conceit and deceit. And I hated the place.
After the first sentence, the reader expects him to go into detail about the people's dislikable qualities. Instead, he names broad and rather universal aspects of their behavior. When his dislike springs from both their laughter and tears, the reader understands that the problem lies less with them and more with his own resentful outlook. Because he feels alienated to begin with, everything about the people irks him—qualities positive or negative, tendencies universal or specific.
In the following paragraph, the husband delivers a similar list about the place itself.
I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness.
The husband again begins with very general things when elaborating on his hatred. He eventually becomes more specific, however. When he mentions the "magic and the secret [he] would never know," he explicitly draws a connection between his inability to comprehend the place and his hatred for it. He also draws an explicit connection between his hatred for Antoinette and his hatred for the place. The husband finds it impossible to accept that Antoinette will always belong more to Granbois than she belongs to him—and that she will always love Granbois in a way she will not love him.
In his first impressions of Dominica, the husband also imbues vivid color and beauty with a negative connotation. His vehement dislike of the place, both in the beginning and at the end, reveals his disinclination to understand Antoinette. Because he associates her with a place that he cannot understand, he refuses to feel at home with her.
Related Themes:
