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Personification is a commonly used literary device that refers to moments in which poets, fiction writers, or playwrights give human characteristics to animals, inanimate objects, or forces. The “thing,” whatever it might be, is spoken about or described as though it were human.
Many poets rely on personification to create vivid imagery and memorable symbolism. For example, in Edgar Allan Poe ’s poem “ The Raven ,” the poet skillfully personifies the raven through allowing it to speak one word, “nevermore,” in response to the narrator ’s questions.
The intention of making things or ideas human is to create a relationship with non-human characters to impress or compel the reader to empathize with the world the writer creates, especially in fictional texts and poems.
Writers use personification to create startling or whimsical visual images, which help to make the world of a book or poem all the more vivid in a reader's imagination.
Personification is a form of metaphor, a literary device comparing two things by applying the qualities of one thing to another. One famous example is the Walt Whitman line, “And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
Personification is the endowment of inanimate objects, animals, or abstract concepts with animate or human-living qualities. History of Personification. Personification has been used in poetry since ancient times, with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as examples.
Definition of Personification. As a literary device, personification is the projection of characteristics that normally belong only to humans onto inanimate objects, animals, deities, or forces of nature. These characteristics can include verbs of actions that only humans do or adjectives that describe a human condition.
