Read the following excerpt from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi:

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?

A. To exaggerate how much Twain and his friends wanted to work on steamboats
B. To overstate the importance of using steamboats to travel along the Mississippi
C. To emphasize that the arrival of a steamboat had a great effect on the town
D. To show that steamboats and the town depended on each other for survival

Hyperbole is the use of excessive exaggeration in describing or talking about something, which in reality isn't really feasible. The statements or claims that are made are mostly "out-of-the-world" type, being unlikely to be found possible in reality.

Mark Twain's memoir of his childhood experience "Life on the Mississippi" talks of how the whole town had been taken in awe of the arrival of the steamer in the Mississippi river. He uses the literary device of "hyperbole" to give an exaggerated claim about the reaction of the people. He emphasizes the arrival of the steamboat which seem to have a great effect on the townspeople. This also enables him to give a humorous yet entertaining picture of the occasion.