Give one example of hyperbole from the story.

A hyperbole is a literary device that over-exaggerates a particular detail or fact; this over-emphasis highlights the seriousness of a situation from a character's point of view.

Take Marguerite's experience in church, for instance. In the introduction, the author recalls for us her embarrassing experience in church one Sunday. At the time, young Marguerite was to recite a special poem in church. However, her "well-known forgetfulness" made it difficult for her to recall the words to the poem at the crucial moment.

Already self-conscious because she was not blond and pretty, but big-boned and dark-skinned, Marguerite became more nervous as time progressed. Meanwhile, her peers laughed at what they considered her ineptitude. To make matters worse, Marguerite had to go to the bathroom during the recitation.

So, after obtaining permission, she made her way warily to the rear of the church. However, on her way there, someone stuck a foot out from a pew and caused Marguerite to stumble. Unfortunately, her stumble caused her to lose some of the contents of her bladder. This is how she describes it:

Then before I reached the door, the sting was burning down my legs and into my Sunday socks. I tried to hold, to squeeze it back, to keep it from speeding, but when I reached the church porch I knew I'd have to let it go, or it would probably run right back up to my head and my poor head would burst like a dropped watermelon, and all the brains and spit and tongue and eyes would roll all over the place. So I ran down into the yard and let it go. I ran, peeing and crying, not toward the toilet out back but to our house.

The hyperbole is bolded in the paragraph above. Here, Marguerite is emphasizing how badly she had to go to the bathroom. Supposedly, the immense pressure from the build-up of urine might have caused the contents of her bladder to run "right back up" to her head and caused her head to burst like a "dropped watermelon," if she had not relieved herself. The burst watermelon would then cause her "brains and spit and tongue and eyes" to roll all over the place like watermelon seeds. That's quite an overstatement!

However, Marguerite describes her experience this way to emphasize what an ordeal the recitation exercise was. Not only was she greatly embarrassed at her inability to remember her words, but she was also greatly humiliated at having to appear in front of the congregation in a poorly remodeled hand-me-down dress. Additionally, a full bladder made the ordeal difficult beyond endurance; the hyperbole perfectly emphasized the misery of her experience.