Personification: definition and examples
Personification is a figure of speech that gives human qualities, feelings or actions to something that is not human, such as an object, an animal or an idea.
Personification lets a moon look round with delight or death stop kindly for a traveler. It turns an object, animal or idea into something that feels and acts like a person. In a novel its best use is quiet: setting that seems to share the point-of-view character's mood.
Borrowing a human face
Readers understand people faster than anything else. Personification uses that shortcut. Give a storm a temper or a house a held breath and the reader feels it at once, without being told what to feel.
The device is broad. Pathetic fallacy, where weather mirrors human emotion, is one narrow kind of it. A talking animal who lives as a full character goes further still, into anthropomorphism.
Examples
"O rose, thou art sick!"
"The Sick Rose," William Blake
Blake speaks to a flower as if it were a person who could fall ill, which makes the poem's corruption feel intimate.
"Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me;"
"Because I could not stop for Death," Emily Dickinson
Death arrives as a courteous caller in a carriage. The politeness is what makes it chilling.
"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,"
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare
Romeo gives the moon envy and the sun a killer's job. The sky acts out what he feels about Juliet.
"The Moon doth with delight / Look round her when the heavens are bare;"
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality," William Wordsworth
A moon with delight gives the night sky the speaker's own remembered childhood joy.
Personification as point of view
Filter it through a character. A grieving widow walks into a house that seems to hold its breath. A newlywed walks into the same house and it leans in to listen. The personification does the emotional work without a word of stated feeling.
Avoid the stock versions. Whispering wind, dancing shadows and smiling suns are so common they read as filler. When you want sharper sensory detail for the moment, [Describe](/features/describe) offers options in the senses you choose, which you can bend toward your character's mood.
Common mistakes
Confusing it with metaphor
"The leaves are dancers" is a metaphor. "The leaves danced" is personification: it maps a human action onto something that is not human.
Mixing moods
If the house is menacing in one line and welcoming in the next with no change in the character, the personification reads as random.
Common questions
- What is the difference between personification and anthropomorphism?
- Personification is figurative and brief: a "cruel" wind. Anthropomorphism is literal and sustained: an animal or object that actually talks, thinks and acts as a character throughout the story.
- What is pathetic fallacy?
- A kind of personification that gives human emotion to nature or weather, like rain that weeps. Every pathetic fallacy is personification; not every personification is pathetic fallacy. ---
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