Using Personification

Writing Tips: Could this be personification?

Writers thoughtfully try to create “an experience” for their readers by engendering emotion through their written words. There are many literary techniques writers may employ to accomplish this, but today we will focus in on a figure of speech called personification. Personification attributes human characteristics to an abstract quality, an inanimate object, or an animal (in other words, something not human, or that is not normally considered to have human qualities). When used properly personification adds a poetic beauty and power to one’s writing.

Personification can be simple. For example, you could say ”the earth will drink the blood of the unbelievers.” In this case I have assigned the human attribute of drinking to the earth. Furthermore, the notion of drinking blood has an almost barbaric tone to it – also a human attribute.

How can you use personification in your own writing? Typically you would want to be selective in your opportunities to use this figure of speech. Perhaps there is a certain object you want to make special, let’s say for example,  the ring in the Lord of the Rings. If you give that one object special attention with this technique, it can give the reader the notion that there is something more to this object, this ring, than meets the eye. On the other hand, you probably would not want to have your protagonist walk through a house and have each and every chair and table exhibit some human attribute, would you? Wait a moment, maybe you would… Let’s say I am writing a horror story in which I have a haunted house - I might want to do that very thing, huh?

Here are some examples of personification usage from popular/classical literature:

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
— Mirror by Sylvia Plath

“The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in”
— Once by the Pacific by Robert Frost

“Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,
Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe.”
—Paradise Lost by John Milton

“The Moon doth with delight / Look round her when the heavens are bare”
—William Wordsworth

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Happy writing!

Justin