Personification
1. How does the word ‘person’ give you a clue of the meaning
of the term ‘personification’?
2. How would you define the word?
3. Why might a poet use personification in a poem?
4. Read the poem below and highlight examples of
personification.
The Sky is Low by Emily Dickinson
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day
How someone treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.
5. Why do you think that Dickinson uses them?
6. What words does she use to set the mood?
7. How does she intensify the image of an unpleasant day?
8. What does she compare nature to and why?
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