The author uses hyperbole and metaphors when describing Bernice's feelings as she walked into the barber shop. "Bernice had all the sensations of Marie Antoinette bound for the guillotine in a tumbrel." The Sevier Barbershop" was a guillotine indeed, and the hangman was the first barber." The contrast between Marjorie's delicate appearance and her vicious nature was described in similes. Marjorie, braiding her hair, "looked like a delicate painting of some Saxon princess." Her braids "moving under the supple fingers like restive snakes ....