personification

__**PERSONIFICATION**__


 * (n)** //A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form//

(http://www.howard-winn.k12.ia.us/projects/ac7/gifanim/personification_zg.gif)

Basically, personification is a description of an inhuman thing, which compares it to having human characteristics. For example, a simple quote like: the cat snickered, is personification comparing it to the evil laughing that some people may do when they are being micheivious.

Personification is a techinque that can be used in language to make imagery more enhanced, to reiterate a theme and to use hyperbole to give readers a clearer sense and direction to their response/emotion to a piece of text or image in literature. It serves as an extension of analogous, in a technique that writers can use to help convey an emphaise on a particular image.

Right before the murder sence, the setting Muersault is in is described as //“silent, motionless" (56-57).// This is an example of how personfication, of the area as silent and motionaless helps to create an effect on the reader by identifying with our human emotions. When humans are quiet and motionless, there is usually a sense of unease or suspense they are feeling, which is exactly what Camus was trying to convey.
 * Personification in Albert Camus's __The Stranger:__**

Similairly, the ocean is personified when Camus describes it as //“gasping for air” (56-57).// This is an example of how personification can be used to extend an image of the ocean in this case, to describe how it moves. By using a personification of the ocean as something that is rapidly moving and in a motion that readers can identify with-a gasp.

The personification of a bed as something happy is the picutre that Marquez is trying to convery with this example of personification: //"no place in life sadder than an empty bed" (74).// Again, this example shows how personification enhances imagery.
 * Personification in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's __Chronicle of A Death Foretold__:**

//"she nailed it....like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written" (53)//

Finally, this example personifies a butterfly to have the human characteristic of a will. By describing a helpless, beautiful animal who has a pre-destined fate, Marquez tries to describe to readers on a more visual and personal level the situation at hand. Humans alike can idenityf with the feeling of powerlessness, which is being described through the use of personification in this quote.

Even Frost uses personification, to show how it can be an extension of metaphors and analogies. The excerpt of an essay on Frost's use of [|"Nature and Pastoralism"] defines his use of personificaiton for us.
 * Robert Frost**

//A final aspect of the nature poetry and one of the most important is Frost's strong tendency to personification. The device is common enough in poems about nature, and most readers are likely to take an unfavorable view of it. It suggests a sentimental pantheism or oversimple allegorizing. Frost's personifications, however, are different from those to which the Romantics have accustomed us. Their personifications generally take the form of brief metaphor, while his are nearly always extended analogies. Keats' ode, "To Autumn," illustrates the point well, for while the season is likened to a woman, the poet does not develop the comparison, but rather suggests through a series of brilliant descriptive images her mysterious presence in the autumn scene. The human and the natural are not compared but blended. Obviously Frost's mode of personification is more explicit and consciously rendered. He does not merely liken things in nature to man, he explores the resemblance, usually at some length. Analogy is the lens through which he examines nature, and personification, which is simply the analogy between man and a natural object, is therefore a primary means of seeing. Frost's preference for personification is indicative of his whole manner of conceiving nature, for such a mode of sustained comparison is only possible within the framework of a world view in which the natural and the human are conceived as distinct and separate yet parallel planes.//