Apagoresis

Apagoresis (a-pa-gor’-e-sis): A statement designed to inhibit someone from doing something. Often uses exaggeration [or hyperbole] to persuade. It may combine an exaggeration with a cause/effect or antecedent/consequence relationship. The consequences or effects of such a phrase are usually exaggerated to be more convincing.

Ms. Cleaver was admonishing me again. She was supposed to be my 5th grade teacher, but she was a nag. Almost everything I did was deserving of a warning. No matter what it was that I did wrong, she would say “If you keep doing that, you’ll poke your eye out.” For example, I crumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it into the wastebasket by her desk. I tossed it from my front-tow seat and I never missed. I had no idea how tossing a crumpled piece of paper would poke my eye out. I got the message though. Ms. Cleaver didn’t want me doing the paper-throwing thing, but the poked-out eye consequence was so unrelated to it, that I didn’t listen. The only consequence I could think of was Ms. Cleaver’s ire. But her ire wasn’t enough to deter me. I spent a lot of time after school writing “I won’t . . .” On the blackboard. That had no effect on me whatsoever. I had developed an interest in calligraphy and chalk was an excellent medium for practicing. I could do a typewriter Pica font that looked like somebody had typewritten on the blackboard. Ms. Cleaver was not impressed. She told me if I kept writing like a typewriter “You’re going to poke your eye out.”

Then, one afternoon when I was being detained after class, I noticed Ms. Cleaver was acting like she was twisting something around in her eye. It was her eye! She pulled it out and placed it on a paper towel. It was a glass eye & she was cleaning it with a cloth.

I asked her why she only had one eye. She told me: “When I was your age, I didn’t listen to my mother and poked my eye out playing pick-up sticks with my brother.” Now I understood her one-track warning, “You’ll poke your eye out.” I could see how sad she was sitting there cleaning her eye. I decided to make her a paper snowflake to hang in her window. I grabbed a sheet of paper and Ms. Cleaver’s scissors from her desk. I started walking to my desk. Ms. Cleaver yelled, “No, no! Don’t do that! You’ll poke your eye out!”

She was right, I poked my eye out. My foot got tangled in my backpack on the floor. I came crashing down with the sharp end of the scissors pointing straight at my eye. Ms. Cleaver called 911.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

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