When I was roaming through literary works, trying to find one in which there are a lot of examples of exaggeration, I thought, "Who exaggerates the most? - Teens!"
Thus I ask myself: where do I find a text in which there are not only teen characters and HYPERBOLE present only in direct speech quotes? Luckily, that question was not a difficult one. Not so long ago I had discovered an amazing magazine that is available both online and in a printed version, and is written by teenagers entirely.
The magazine is TeenInk And since we exaggerate when we speak naturally, I saw the nonfiction /personal experience section of the magazine as the most fitting one for beginning my pursuit. Let me explain this. When one tries to write fiction, it is usually a lot more polished and a lot less honest or impassioned. However, in essays, commentaries, personal experience portrayals etc, there's a lot more of the writer that is easily visible, and that requires no Major in English Literature to discover, interpret or construe.
Tired of the short stories I read previously in hope of finding something worth elaborating, I refrained from going through the issue and picking up a most suitable text. I just read the first one in the issue.
This time, it worked well enough..
It was an article by Andria Petros, a girl from Pennsylvania, and it is named Delicious Dilemma. It ponders not on philosophy, on some great life-changing event, or on a major political issue. It is actually regarding whether to eat what she wants, or to listen to advices from people who offer her less caloric food.
The article can be read
here.
Even the first sentence of the text is obviously not an objective observation, nor it is portraying physically justified actions. Here's how it goes:
"If I didn't cut the ice cream out of my diet now right now, I was going to inflate like a glutinous balloon and pop at an unripe age."
Let's examine the goal of this very first sentence in the text, and how does HYPERBOLE help it!
Checking for each of the purposes that have previously been listed, we can see that several points apply. Namely, the Andria Petros exaggerates to show more clearly / to make a vivid description / to point out the greatness of the consequences
of not forfeiting ice-cream. She wasn't literally going to blow up and explode, that is, gain volume and split in pieces, but she was maybe just going to gain weight yet still remain in a single piece.
Further in the text appears on of the most obvious and easiest to bust examples.(*) Yup, commercials it is!
The lady on the screen tells the viewers this: “Yogurt! It's a simple, easy switch that could cut hundreds of calories and lead to you losing 30 pounds.”
Can you see the catch in this sentence above? It's the word "could".
A cliche-like yet appropriate phrase to use here would be "You must have been living in a nutshell not to have heard of this." Before and after pictures. Skinny ladies smiling, showing elegantly a new product that is worth nothing, yet it is sold for a fortune.(**) And each looks as if she has just won the lottery. Some people fall for it, and one out of ten buyers maaayybe manages to lose a few pounds. And then again it is mostly due to determination and/or practice, the fancy product playing only as a placebo. Obviously enough, HYPERBOLE here is used for marketing.
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| Taiwan weight-loss drink add. |
The author has a response very similar to my own, to this specie of fake-smile, hours of Photoshop, Video-edited, a ton-of make-up girls. She says:
"Jeezum, woman, you're gonna make me sick." Now unless the woman sticks a finger down the author's throat, this statement is again an exaggeration, made to emphasize how repulsive the lady in the commercial seems to the Andria.
The following paragraph discusses the attractiveness of the "Peanut Butter Explosion" dessert, and uses hyperbole to create a vivid description. Worthy of pointing out are "Magical frozen yogurt." (used to mock), and "It was as genius a creation as the microwave". I don't think it took somebody deep knowledge of advanced physics to make it, but this example sure demonstrates how awesome the dessert seems to the author. And to everyone who sees the following picture.
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| What a Peanut Butter Explosion Dessert looks like |
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| How a Microwave Oven works |
And then, right before the author decides to neglect all the brainwashing from the commercials, there is another line by the annoying lady: “Once again, the perfect example of how a product can taste the same but be so much better for you!”
And why is this HYPERBOLE ? Let Andria herself explain it: It's because "There was no way yogurt could bring me the pure joy of ice cream."
Maybe that's true, maybe not. However, there's no
"perfect example" for something that deals with taste, since
De gustibus non est disputandum. And there is no
"same taste" unless the ingredients are the exact same chemical substances, in which case the yogurt can not be healthier, since it would contain the same things that the desert does.
All these examples prove that I did the right thing to take this text for analysis. However, what's important to be noted is that without these the text wouldn't have looked the same, nor it would've left the same effect to the reader..
Again, the original text can be read
here. So, Andria, nice use of HYPERBOLE , and thanks for providing an interesting example.
