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

“I’ve wondered about her intelligence ever since I adopted her and subsequently discovered that she was unable to figure out how stairs worked.”

Allie describes her suspicions about one of her dogs—the “simple dog.” She desperately wants to prove the dog’s capabilities through IQ tests she looks up online.

“Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me.”

Brosh sets up a frame story for her struggles with motivation and task completion. She also creates an expectation with “most people” in a longer sentence, then follows this with the sentence fragment excluding herself. The shift creates humor with its directness.

“[T]o me, the future doesn’t seem real. It’s just this magical place where I can put my responsibilities so that I don’t have to be scared while hurtling toward failure at eight hundred miles per hour.”

As she does throughout the book, Brosh uses the hyperbolic image of an 800 MPH movement speed to illustrate the emotional difficulty that accompanies her motivational issues. The hyperbolic prose is accompanied in the text by a drawing of Allie piloting a spaceship—presumably at 800 MPH—with a big grin on her face.

“My need for sugar would become so massive that it would collapse in upon itself and create a vacuum into which even more sugar would be drawn until all the world had been stripped of sweetness.”

Allie’s childhood hyperactivity is triggered by sugar. She spends a great deal of time and effort trying to acquire as much of it as possible. In this chapter, she is so excited about it that she steals her grandfather’s birthday cake.

“We said, ‘Just go back there and bring us the most hopeless, psychologically destroyed dog-monster you can find.”

Allie and Duncan set out to find a friend for the “simple dog.” They tell the shelter they want a dog with issues, so they adopt the “helper dog” (this quote is what they tell the shelter, as Brosh describes it through exaggeration). The characterization of the “helper dog” is of a creature uninterested in human contact and focused on vengeance.

“She’s more like a sea cucumber with legs.”

Brosh often characterizes the “simple dog” as a marine animal. Not as a mammal, but an echinoderm with the thinking abilities of a creature who lives most of their life without moving.

“[T]rying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back.”

Brosh uses metaphor to underscore the unlikelihood of success for her chosen strategy to combat depression. Through vivid humorous imagery, she illustrates exactly how it does not work.

“[M]y depression got so horrible that it actually broke through to the other side and became a sort of fear-proof exoskeleton.”

The turning point in Allie’s depression comes from her feeling of invincibility once she realizes she no longer has the ability to care about anything. As she returns a very overdue movie to the rental store, she is no longer afraid.

“[T]hat’s the most frustrating thing about depression […] it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing.”

Using immediacy of voice, Allie narrates what her experience of depression was like, especially around people who tried to help her feel better. Her frank discussion of mental illness, as in this quote, is a big part of why her book was so popular.

“It’s a strange moment when you realize that you don’t want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I’m sure I would have felt surprised.”

Allie’s depression reaches its peak with suicidal ideation. In the narrative arc of this chapter, this is the climax. Afterwards, she decides to get help.

“That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it’s funny. I don’t even know why.”

Allie’s outburst of uncontrolled laughter when she spots a piece of old corn marks a turning point in her depression. It also marks a tonal turning point in the chapter and in the book overall.

“Packing all of your belongings into a U-Haul and then transporting them across several states is nearly as stressful and futile as trying to run away from lava in swim fins.”

Brosh uses a frame story to contextualize her personal narrative. As she commonly does throughout the book, she uses a metaphor to illustrate an exaggerated version of the actual events she experienced.

“Dear family members and people whom my family members led to believe that I adored hot sauce with the fiery intensity of ten thousand jalapeños: I lied.”

In a climactic reversal of plot, Allie admits that her apparent obsession with hot sauce as a child was all an act. In a letter printed within the text of the chapter, she directly addresses the audience whom she believes was hoodwinked by her lie. 

“[A] few times a year, I spontaneously decide that I’m ready to be a real adult.”

Throughout the chapters on adulthood and life skills, Brosh returns to the concept of what it means to truly be an adult. Throughout her philosophizing about the nature of adulthood, she explores her behavioral patterns through her attempts to improve those skills. In this passage, she contextualizes a failed attempt to create routine and habits.

“I begin to feel like I’ve accomplished my goals. It’s like I think that adulthood is something that can be earned like a trophy in one monumental burst of effort.”

Allie notes her behavioral pattern of feeling self-congratulatory when she is consistent for a few days about her habits and routines. In an illustration accompanying this quote, she depicts a trophy for the ability to be responsible. In this passage, she uses self-deprecating humor to closely analyze her own failures.

“[O]ne day, the parrot suddenly stopped working. Several other toys had suffered similar fates, most notably our Bop It and a novelty toy called Crazy Singing Santa.”

In this passage, Allie puts the disappearance of an annoying parrot toy in context. As with other events from her childhood that she depicts, she uses flash-forwards to illustrate her adult self’s perception of events that happened when she was young. The diction here—”suffered similar fates” is a wryly amusing twist on the parrot being broken by her annoyed parents.

“If you were sitting quietly on your couch […] and while you were waiting, someone called you up and said ‘I’ll give you a million dollars if you can guess what’s going to happen next,’ you absolutely would not guess ‘I am going to be brutally and unexpectedly attacked by a goose in my own home.’“

Brosh sets up her boyfriend’s goose attack as a hypothetical to underscore how surprising the attack itself was for him. She switches to the second-person point of view to directly address the reader. She uses the word “brutally” as hyperbole: Duncan was not severely injured in the attack.

“[W]hen I walked into my living room and found this thing chasing Duncan, I finally recognized it: the predatory gleam in its eyes and its jerky, robotic movements were straight out of the dinosaur documentaries I used to watch as a child.”

Here, Allie likens the average goose who made its way into her home to a fierce dinosaur ready to attack. Further, her italicized use of “thing” makes the goose not just an animal, but something wholly foreign.

“Reality doesn’t give a shit about my rules, and this upsets me...when reality disobeys my rules, detectable levels of surprise, disappointment, and frustration are produced.”

In this passage, Brosh uses characterization to make reality into a tangible entity that can obey or disobey her rules. Her rules are a cognitive distortion she uses to justify how she interacts with the world. In her analysis of her own behavior, she notes the rules can be ridiculous.

“[T]here’s a definite pattern to these illogical internal reactions, and, theoretically, over weeks and months, a dedicated outside observer could piece together a crude understanding of my rules and the ways in which I attempt to impose them on reality.”

In this passage, Brosh introduces the humorous element of considering her own behavior from the perspective of a scientific observer. Illustrations show fake observational notes that are meant to be like those a scientist might take in a real scientific study. Using self-deprecation, she describes her behavior as an “attempt to impose.” 

“We’ve known each other for a while now, dogs. For the last few years, you’ve lived in my house, slept on my bed, and peed on almost every inch of my yard...That being the case, there are some things I think you should know.” 

In this passage, Brosh uses direct address to her dogs to share with them some truths. She uses the second-person point of view to imagine how her dogs might respond, even though she knows neither dog is able to actually read what she’s written. Because of this direct address, readers of her piece become sideline observers to the narrative action.

“Q: Should eat bees?

A: No.

Q: But … never bees?

A: No. You should never eat bees.”

Allie imagines a question-and-answer section with her dogs at the end of this chapter. Her dog narrators, who are based on her real dogs, cover all of the material from previous sections. Allie alters Standard English grammar to evoke canine syntax.

“[M]y mom noticed all the people glaring at her and realized that […] it appeared as though she was not only refusing to let her poor, mentally disabled daughter go to a park and/or a birthday party, but was also taunting her child about her disability.”

Allie narrates part of this chapter from her mother’s perspective rather than her own. This passage is an example of her engagement with issues of intellectual disability. There are several places in the book where she uses outdated and potentially ableist terminology like “simple” instead of more up-to-date language.