Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

The literary techniques of simile, metaphor, and hyperbole are common across a great deal of creative writing. They are used to exaggerate or to enhance the impact of a text through vivid imagery. Brosh uses these techniques across chapters of her graphic memoir Hyperbole and a Half. Primarily, Brosh uses these techniques to create tension and conflict in what might otherwise be a humdrum anecdote about her everyday life. Many of the pieces in her book are reliant on these techniques for both their humor and their narrative momentum.

Brosh often uses simile in descriptions to underscore some dimension of a character. For example, she describes one of her dogs as “uncoordinated in a way that would suggest her canine lineage is tainted with traces of a species with a different number of legs—like maybe a starfish or a snake” (20). In describing her dog as like a starfish or snake, Brosh uses simile (note that she is not declaring that her dog is, in fact, actually a starfish or a snake).