Personification

Personification means giving human qualities to something that is not human. You can use personification when describing nature, everyday objects, or even abstract concepts such as love or death.

Personification meaning

Just look at the word itself - personification. Think of it as meaning “turning something into a person”. Like metaphor and simile, personification is a type of figurative language, or a figure of speech, meaning that it expresses an idea or feeling in a way that is non-literal.

Personification examples - words and sentences

The best way to understand personification is by looking at examples; In this section, we'll dissect some lines by famous writers, but first, here are a few phrases that you might hear in everyday conversation.

Examples of everyday personification

In this example, the speaker describes a storm as if it has an emotion - we know that a storm doesn't literally feel rage, but the phrase helps us to picture it as an aggressive force.

Not only does the word "groaning" help us to imagine the creaking sound of the wood, but it suggests a particular attitude - we get the idea that the floorboards are jaded and miserable - well, wouldn't you be if people kept walking all over you?

Fig. 1 - A raging storm.

We know that if a person is "crying out" for something, they are in desperate need - here, the speaker uses this term to make their point about how badly they feel the room needs new wallpaper.

Examples of personification in poetry

By describing the rose as "modest", Blake gives it a personality and explains why it might grow a thorn to keep others at bay.

Here the personification comes from the idea that the sink is choking - we can imagine its clogged plughole as a throat crammed with soggy bread and almost feel sorry for it, despite the fact that it's an inanimate object.

By suggesting that the frisbee is racing its own shadow, McGough adds some playful personification to an everyday trick of the light.

Examples of personification in song lyrics

In this famous line, the speaker is directly addressing the darkness as if it was a person. Referring to darkness as his friend lets us know that he is familiar with it, giving us an insight into his state of mind.

This one isn't obvious at first, but the rapper Common is personifying the culture of hip hop as a woman. Throughout the song he talks about how they grew up together and how their relationship changed over the years as she became more materialistic. This song could also be classed as an extended metaphor .

This song describes a morning in New York, and in this line, the swaggering, bold personality of the sun seems to reflect the attitude of the city.

Examples of personification in fiction

King uses personification to create a creepy, unsettling effect as the elevator appears to mock the protagonist Wendy, daring her to step inside.

(Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 1927)

This refers to the drafts blowing through an empty house; saying that they “crept round corners” makes us imagine them as intruders. Woolf then builds on this imagery, going on to describe them "toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall?"

(Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895)

In this line from Wilde's play, the speaker is telling his love interest that if absolute perfection (an abstract concept) was a person, it would be her. To him, she symbolises the idea of perfection. In the next section, we'll take a closer look at this type of personification: using characters (fictional or real) as symbols.

Characters as symbols

Throughout folklore and popular culture, you'll find many characters that represent abstract concepts. Sometimes, even real people become symbolic of certain ideas.

Which characters personify abstract concepts?

An example of a character that personifies an abstract concept is Father Time - often portrayed as a bearded old man, he represents the concept of time. Similarly, Cupid is the personification of love, and Mother Nature is the personification of (you guessed it) nature.

Death is commonly represented as a hooded figure, sometimes known as the Grim Reaper, but there are many variations of this across different cultures. Another example you may be familiar with is Uncle Sam, the symbol of American patriotism who famously appeared on the “I want YOU” posters.

Fig. 2 - Uncle Sam is the personification of the US.

Sometimes, you might describe a real person as the personification of an abstract concept. For example, you might call somebody who has spent their whole life helping others as "the personification of kindness". Perhaps you'd refer to a cruel dictator from history as "the personification of evil". Or maybe you think of that person who never tidies up their own mess as “the personification of laziness”! Of course, in real life people have many different sides to them - this is just one way of using personification as a rhetorical device.

Effect of personification

Hopefully, the examples from poetry, song lyrics and fiction have shown you how personification can make a piece of writing much more vivid; it can really make the words “jump off the page” (which also happens to be an example of personification!). By giving human emotions to inanimate objects, you can enhance the feel or atmosphere of a piece. Another reason to use personification is to express an idea or opinion - using characters as symbols can be a powerful technique to achieve this effect. Think of personification as another tool in your box of figurative language that can help make your writing more expressive.

Personification vs anthropomorphism - what's the difference?

It can be tricky to distinguish between personification and anthropomorphism, as they have a lot in common.

First, let us define anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is when anything that is not human (such as animals or objects) is made to act human. Examples include:

• Cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck wear human clothes, can talk and live human-like lives.
• Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, are anthropomorphized trains.
• The animals in George Orwell's Animal Farm can talk and some of them eventually walk on two legs.

So how does this differ from personification? Well, in their own fictional world, these characters are not figures of speech, they are literal; we are supposed to believe that they are really living and breathing, walking around and acting like humans. Also, they do not necessarily symbolize an idea or abstract concept in the way that personification can.

For further clarity, let's compare the two so that we can see the similarities and differences:

Fig. 3 - Personification vs anthropomorphism.