A hyperbole is a type of figurative language in which an author uses an exaggeration to express a point. Dr. Wheeler gives us the following example of hyperbole: "His thundering shout could split rocks" ("Tropes," Carson-Newman University).
In To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee uses hyperbole to help capture the voice of her narrator Scout, as a young child. Since children rarely see the world literally, using exaggeration helps capture the thoughts and voice of a young child. One example of hyperbole can be seen in Chapter 11 in Scout's description of the two children waiting for Atticus to come home after Jem had blown his top and whacked off all of Mrs. Dubose's camellia flowers. Since it felt like such a long wait due to the fact that the children knew they would be in trouble and did not go and greet him by Mrs. Dubose's house as they usually did, Scout uses the following hyperbole to describe the wait time and Atticus's eventual arrival:
Two geological ages later, we heard the soles of Atticus's shows scrape the front steps. (Ch. 11)
A metaphor is a common type of figurative language in which a writer makes a descriptive point by comparing something to something else. Dr. Wheeler gives us the following example of a metaphor: "Carthage was a beehive of buzzing workers" ("Tropes").
One example of a metaphor in To Kill a Mockingbird can be found in Chapter 7, soon after Scout, Jem, and Dill sneak over to the Radleys' house at night to try to peer in to the window, earlier in Chapter 6. During the adventure, Jem had gotten his pants caught in the bared-wire fence and had to abandon them. At two in the morning, Jem went back to retrieve them and found them lying folded up on the fence, having been mended but mended by someone without any skill, like a man, like Boo Radley. At the start of Chapter 7, not knowing in what state Jem had found his pants, Scout notes that Jem had been moody all week immediately after returning to the Radleys' at 2 in the morning. Scout attributes his moodiness to fear and uses the following two metaphors to explain what her own fears would have been like in the same situation:
As Atticus had once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem's skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon. (Ch. 7)
Since Scout does not literally "climb into Jem's skin," we know this is a perfect example of figurative language. In addition, we know that Harper Lee is using the image of "climbing into Jem's skin" as a comparison to describe Scout's attempt to understand what was going on inside of Jem's head. Since Lee is creating greater understanding by drawing a comparison between "climbing into Jem's skin" and literally understanding someone, we see that this is a perfect example of a metaphor. In addition, Scout would not have literally died had she gone to the Radleys' at 2 am; therefore, Lee is also drawing a comparison between Scout's fear and death to better capture Scout's fear, thereby creating a second metaphor.
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