In both Speak and the poem If, the theme is shown through the use of hyperboles. Melinda is in a complicated, heated situation as explained when she states, “He hit me. I scream, scream. Why aren’t the walls falling? I’m screaming loud enough to make the whole school crumble” (Anderson 194). Melinda uses a hyperbole to over exaggerate the situation of being trapped in the janitor’s closet with the rapist, Andy Evans. Comparatively, Hara Estroff Marano, the author of The Art of Resilience, writes, “Resilient people don’t walk between the raindrops, they have scars to show for their experience” (Marano). To get her point across, Marano had to make an overstatement by telling the readers that resilient people don’t take the easy route, they have