Personification
BARRY 2011
PERSONIFICATION
Latin Roots
-ion:
act of, state of, result of, like
fic:
to do, to make
person: person
personification: act of making a person
PERSONIFICATION
• personification: a type of figurative
language that gives human
characteristics to a nonhuman thing
• Authors can personify
• abstract ideas
• forces of nature
• inanimate objects
• animals and plants
PERSONIFICATION: EXAMPLES
• Love is blind.
• A gentle breeze caressed our skin.
• Tears fell from a melancholy sky.
• The tree endured the winter
patiently, waiting for a new spring.
Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and
Literary Terms.
PERSONIFICATION: EXAMPLES
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such a
sight,
And the dish ran away with the
spoon.
PERSONIFICATION: EXAMPLES
Two Sunflowers Move in the Yellow Room
By William Blake
"Ah, William, we're weary of weather,"
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
"Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?“
They arranged themselves at the window
and counted the steps of the sun,
and they both took root in the carpet
where the topaz tortoises run.
PERSONIFICATION: EXAMPLES
The Train
By Emily Dickinson
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
PERSONIFICATION: EXAMPLES
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a start its own,
Stop-docile and omnipotentA stable door.
PERSONIFICATION PARAGRAPH
You will choose a nonhuman object to
personify.
You’ll write and illustrate a paragraph about
this object. We will work on typing this on
Thursday in class.
Your paragraph will also feature imagery.
Example objects to personify:
friendship, fear, the wind, the ocean, your pet
PREWRITING: WEB
Place your chosen object in the middle
of a circle.
Create a web of human characteristics
that your object could possess.