Personification

What It Is..

The act of giving human qualities to objects that are NOT human

Why Is This Important?

Readers can connect better with objects that are personified.

Descriptions are often more vivid with personification.

How Do I Find Personification?

Look for non-living objects that have been given human qualities.

Seek to explain WHY the author has described…whatever…as something human?Move to that interpretive level

Example #1

…plump, sleek, arrogant mice…

What can mice be?

What can they not be and that humans can?

What might this mean?

Example #2

And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven

Till it reached away back to that shadowy place,

Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.

Example #3 - From Scrubs…

Example #4 - From “Hip Hop is Dead”

Hip hop just died this mornin’

And she's dead, she's dead

Example #5 – From “It’s Not Over”

Let’s start over.

I’ll try to do it right this time.

It’s not over.

Cause a part of me is dead and in the ground.

This love is killing me.

Example #6 – From “Blvd of Broken Dreams”

I walk this empty street

On the boulevard of broken dreams

When the city sleeps

And I’m the only one

Examples

The wind sang her mournful song through the falling leaves.

Wind is being personified.

Singing a “mournful song”

Meaning? Wind reminds the speaker of a sad event? Falling leaves could represent death (Tree is dying) so the wind

is singing a sad song BY the falling of the leaves?

Examples

The video camera observed the whole scene.

Video camera is being personified.

Giving it the ability to see…to “observe”

The camera served as a witness to an event….it saw (and recorded) the whole thing!