All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 40. Dickens uses hyperbole, or exaggeration for effect, in this passage from Pip humorously telling us about his total lack of a plan. He could as soon “have formed an elephant,” he says. Living his new life has made him miserable.