Personification
This article is part of the Figures of Speech course. You may choose to follow it in a structured way, or read each item separately.
- Figures of comparison
- Simile
- says one thing is like another (and extended simile)
- Metaphor
- makes a hidden or covert comparison (and extended metaphor)
- Dead and fossilized metaphors
- those which have become commonplace
- Personification
- compares something not human to a person
- Conceit
- makes a very far-fetched or unlikely striking comparison
- Symbols
- are conventional comparisons more generally agreed by a culture
- Allegory
- tells a story in terms of a different world
- Metonymy - synecdoche
- use part of something to stand for the whole thing, or vice-versa
- Figures of meaning
- Figures of construction
- Figures of sound patterning
- Miscellaneous Figures
Personification is a figure of speech, a form of metaphor. In a personification, something not human is compared to a person. A common cliché is to say 'The lion is the King of the jungle'. Literally, of course, this is nonsense. The lion doesn't tell the other animals what to do; he doesn't collect his wealth from them. But there is a sense in which a simple idea is vividly expressed - the lion is perceived as the strongest, most feared animal in the jungle. (It doesn't matter to readers of creative writing if modern biologists tell us that this is not quite true. It is enough that we understand - and possibly share - the perception that this is how it is.)
The poet Dylan Thomas once wrote, of a hot summer day, that "The sun declared war on the butter; and the butter ran." He is comparing the sun (without saying that it is a comparison, so this is a metaphorical personification) to a great warrior, commander or King; and he is developing the idea by making a pun on the word 'run'. In its literal sense, it means 'melt', but Thomas also uses it metaphorically, as a personification suggesting that the butter is a cowardly person fleeing from the great warrior (the sun).