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

When Allie and Duncan are watching a scary movie, Allie hears a loud noise. At first, she thinks the noise is part of the film, but it continues even in quieter scenes. The neighbor’s dog starts yelping, so Allie decides to investigate. Duncan stays on the couch, waiting for her to come back so they can finish the movie.

In the yard, she finds a goose pecking at the ground and emitting the loud noise she heard previously. In a series of illustrations on pages 253-254, Allie remembers being pecked by geese as a child when she was trying to feed them breadcrumbs. She considers whether the goose was the cause of the neighbor’s dog’s yelps, and she decides to go back inside just in case. The goose sees her and lunges. She stumbles back, and the goose makes a beeline for her open back door.

The goose creeps up behind Duncan and attacks him. Allie returns inside to find Duncan yelling and throwing things at the goose. Together, they trap the goose inside the kitchen, but it soon figures out how to escape. Allie and Duncan flee upstairs, where they catch their breath. They decide to trap the goose in a blanket, but when they open the door, they see no sign of it.

They find the goose in the living room, pecking at their possessions. Allie traps it in the blanket and carries it outside. She and Duncan decide to drive the goose to a pond near the edge of town so it cannot find its way back to their house. However, they neglect to put it inside a carrier, so it escapes from the blanket while they are driving. Allie fends it off with a windshield scraper while Duncan gets them closer to the pond. Once they get close enough, they prod the goose out of the backseat and leave it standing in the road. Allie closes the illustrated chapter with stills from real video she took while the goose was inside her house.

Allie admits to having a subconscious list of rules for how reality should work. When these rules are violated, she feels angry and disappointed because she is “constantly trying to be impressed or surprised by everything” (271). She wants reality to follow through on her expectations regardless of how reality itself works.

In a series of illustrations patterned after scientific observations on pages 272-275, Allie details some of her frustrations: What she thought was a dog turns out to be a dirt pile; it takes longer than she expects to unlock her front door; she faces a headwind both coming to and going home from the grocery store; a garbage truck wakes her up too early.

Allie is self-aware of her capacity not only to use rules she has made up about how reality works but also to make up new rules all the time. She does not like it when she cannot control reality, such as when a stranger parks outside her house or when birds make noise as she’s trying to concentrate.

In a series of illustrations on pages 283-285, Allie considers how she might react if someone else were to observe her frustration about how reality works. She would run away, try to hide, and keep very still for hours (until she needed to drink water to avoid dehydration). She admits that the most embarrassing thing about her behavior is the illusion that she maintains dignity worth protecting. 

Written directly to her dogs, Allie explains basic concepts. She breaks this explanation down into sub-chapters.

The first subchapter is titled “Common Misconceptions.” Allie explains that holes are not important, and that her dogs should not dig them. She tells her dogs that no matter how often they pull while on a leash, they will never get to decide where to go because dogs make bad decisions, such as what to do when they see a plastic bag by the side of the road. Her dogs react to plastic bags with panic. Allie also spells out that people do not love it when dogs jump up on them. She tells her dogs it is never okay to eat bees because the bees will always sting their faces. In an illustration on page 296, she explains dog logic with a flowchart of attempts to perform the same action and get the same bad result.

In the second subchapter titled “The Word ‘No,’” Allie goes through every mistranslation of “no” her dogs use when she tells them to stop barking. These include making different noises or quieting momentarily before barking again. At the end of this section, she gives the dogs a pop quiz on the word’s definition.

In the third subchapter titled “Noises,” Allie spells out for her dogs that when noises are happening, the solution is not to make more noise; it’s to accept their lack of knowledge.

The fourth subchapter is titled “Danger.” Allie directs this chapter primarily to the simple dog, whose rules for determining what is a friend versus foe remain a mystery. The simple dog loves lawnmowers and moving cars but is terrified of the nail clippers and vacuums.

In the fifth subchapter titled “The Horrible Games You Like,” Allie goes into detail about each game her dogs play, including chewing up objects, squeaking a ball, and running directly at her knees.

In the sixth subchapter, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want and There Are No Loopholes,” Allie reminds her dogs that whining at her will not persuade her to change her mind about a decision. Neither will pretending to be hungry right after a meal or pretending that all four legs have stopped working when it’s time to go home from the dog park.

In the seventh subchapter, “Questions,” Allie answers imaginary follow-up questions posed by her dogs about the material detailed earlier in the chapter. 

In childhood, Allie discovers she will need orthodontic surgery on the same day as a friend’s birthday party. She asks her mother if she can still go, and her mother says she can if she feels well enough. Allie resolves to pretend to feel okay enough to attend. She fixates on the idea of proving her rapid recovery to her mother by running across a park.

Allie is released from surgery before the anesthesia wears off completely. She yells “PARP! PARP!” (317). Her mother does not understand, so Allie opens the car door as they are traveling on the highway and tries to jump out to get to the park. Fortunately, she forgets to unbuckle her seatbelt, so she does not fall out of the car.

Allie’s mother is shaken up. She takes Allie to a fast-food restaurant to let the anesthesia wear off a bit more before driving home. She sits Allie in a booth and waits in line to order. Allie forgets why they’re in the restaurant and goes to her mom to tell her it’s time to go to the park.

As they’re eating, Allie explains to her mother that they need to go to the park and then to the party. Her mother refuses. Allie sobs into her milkshake. Her mother notices other patrons staring and realizes that it appears to strangers as though she’s preventing her intellectually disabled child from attending a party. Her mother gives up and agrees to let Allie attend the party. 

Allie illuminates the discrepancy between how she imagines she would behave in an emergency situation and her actual behavior. She struggles with impulse control in public and expends a great deal of energy simply preventing herself from acting on her urges. She notes that while the idea of being a good person is central to her identity, the work of being an actual good person is something she always puts off for another day (while feeling gratified that someday she plans to do something good).

Allie also takes pride in not behaving badly when it might be easy to do so because she sees her initial internal reactions as those of a “fundamentally horrible person” (337). As an example, she describes comforting Duncan after a bad day. At first, she feels inconvenienced by Duncan’s feelings; then, she feels bad for feeling inconvenienced. Finally, she comforts Duncan.

When Allie becomes aware of others’ good behavior, it makes her feel bad about herself. She tries to resolve contradictory aspects of her identity without success.

Allie relates that she has “an entire system of lies and tricks” (345) to prevent herself from realizing her initial behavioral impulses are usually negative. In a full-page illustration on page 346, she describes the complex cognitive hoops through which she jumps to keep this realization at bay.

Allie considers how most people conceive of self-improvement as a lifelong process, whereas she approaches it as though she must change everything at once. She likens this process to getting rid of a wasp nest by killing every single wasp in one fell swoop.

With a small bit of self-reflection, Allie recognizes she deludes herself to feel better and maintain a positive self-image. She uses the metaphor of a journey through the woods to illustrate this delusion, complete with a security guard for the generator of her self-worth. When she finds out she has been using a complex web of lies to maintain how she feels about herself, she first congratulates herself on solving her own less-savory qualities. However, she then realizes she still has those qualities—she simply knows about them now. The final three pages of the book feature illustrated self-portraits of Allie hushing herself.