Question

Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get

ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at
one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursing as
the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the
steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff
and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town
drunkard asleep by the skids once more.
How does Twain use hyperbole in this excerpt?
O A. To show that steamboats and the town depended on each other
for survival
B. To overstate the importance of using steamboats to travel along
the Mississippi
OC. To exaggerate how much Twain and his friends wanted to work on
steamboats
OD. To emphasize that the arrival of a steamboat had a great effect on
the town

Answer 1

Twain uses hyperbole in this excerpt:

D. To emphasize that the arrival of a steamboat had a great effect on the town.

Step-by-step explanation:

Hyperbole is a figure of speech used to emphasize an idea by exaggerating it. We use hyperbole often in our daily lives, without even noticing it. For instance, when you tell your friend you have called him a million times, you are using this figure of speech. You're exaggerating the number of times you called to emphasize the urgency of the matter.

In the excerpt we are analyzing here, Twain exaggerates his description of how hectic the town gets once the steamboat arrives. The way he describes it, there are people and goods coming and going, and screams and curses - in other words, a messy frenzy. However, once the boat is gone, the town "is dead again". As we can see, he is exaggerating the description to emphasize the effect the steamboat's arrival had on the town.