PERSONIFICATION
Sometimes an inanimate object (non-living thing), an abstract idea or an animal is given human characteristics (personified) so as to enable the reader to picture what is happening to the object, abstract thought or animals much better.
Examples : Sadness gripped me by my throat and took away my speech.
Emotion, which is abstract, is personified since it seems capable of executing motions (‘gripped’ and ‘took away’) that only humans can execute.
E.g.: The top spun round and round like a ballerina before collapsing breathless onto the ground.
The inanimate object, the top, is given human characteristics, i.e. the ability to ‘spin’ and go ‘breathless’. It is also compared to a ballerina – note use of the word, ‘like’. Do you remember what you had learnt earlier?
Name the figurative language used and the two dissimilar things that are being compared.
Figurative Language : _________________________________________________
Comparison is made between __________________________and _____________
Example : An instance of personification and its effect on the poem is given below.
The Wind By James Stephens
The wind stood up and gave a shout.
He whistled on his fingers and
Kicked the withered leaves about
And thumped the branches with his hand
And said he’d kill and kill and kill
And so he will and so he will.
A. Below identify the thing, or things, that is, or are, being personified and describe the effect that the use of personification has on the piece of writing below.
So Peter Hovenden and his daughter
Annie plodded on, without further conversation, until, in a by-street of the town, they found themselves passing the open door of a blacksmith’s shop.
Within was seen the forge, now blazing up, and illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows was puffed forth, or again inhaled into its vast leathern lungs.
In the intervals of brightness, it was easy to distinguish hung upon the wall; in the momentary gloom, the fire seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space.
Moving about in this red glare and alternate dusk, was the figure of the blacksmith, well-worthy to be viewed in so picturesque an aspect of light and shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night, as if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other.
Anon, he drew a white-hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the anvil, uplifted his arm of might, and was seen enveloped in the myriad of sparks which the strokes of his hammer scattered into the surrounding gloom.
A. Identify at least 2 similes, 1 metaphor, 2 personifications, 5 adjectives and 3 adverbs and explain the effect that each would have on the reader.
We had been two days without water in the hilly, sand-covered August furnace of the Gobi Desert and I felt the first fluttering of fear.
The early days of the sun rising over the rim of the world dispersed the sharp chill of the desert night.
Fear came with small, fast-beating wings and was suppressed as we sucked pebbles and dragged our feet on to make maximum distance before the blinding heat of noon.
From time to time one or other of us would climb one of the endless knolls and look south to see the same deadly landscape stretching to the horizon.
The heat enveloped us, sucking most of the moisture from our bodies, putting ankle-irons of lethargy about our legs.
Each one of us walked with his own thoughts and none spoke, dully concentrating on placing one foot ahead of the other interminably.
Most often l led the way, and the others bunched together a few yards behind.
I was driving them now, making them get to their feet in the mornings, forcing them to cut short the noon rest.
As we still walked in the rays of the setting sun the fear hit me again.
It was, of course, the fundamental, most oppressive fear of all – that we should die here in the burning wilderness.
It began to take shape and definition, and hope began to well up in us.
And hope became certainty.
There were trees – real, live, growing, healthy trees in a clump, outlined against the sand like a blob of ink on a fresh-laundered tablecloth.
The trees loomed larger and I saw they were palms and in their shade was a sunken hollow, roughly oval-shaped, and I knew there must be water.
A few hundred yards from the oasis we crossed an east-west caravan track.
On the fringe of the trees we passed an incongruous pile of what looked like rusting biscuits tins as in some fantastic mid-desert junk yard.
In the last twenty yards we quickened our pace and I think we managed a lope that was very near a run.
