For just about as long as people have been telling stories, we’ve been using personification to make the concepts in those stories more relatable. Personification has existed for millennia. A big part of this is that kids’ stories tend to feature animals and objects, rather than people, as the characters. Demonstrate the non-human’s role in the story more clearlyĪnd, personification is fun! It livens up dramatic and narrative writing through engaging figurative language.Īlthough writers use personification in all kinds of creative writing, you’re most likely to come across it in children’s stories.Make it easier for the reader to empathize with the human characters in the story.Make a human character’s relationship with the non-human clearer to readers.Make it easier for readers to empathize with it.By humanizing a non-human through personification, you can do several things: When you personify an object, animal, or anything else that’s not human in your writing, you make that “thing” feel more human. (In this example, “stood tall, looming over them” is both personification and symbolism, with the courthouse’s imposing appearance symbolizing the government’s power.)
The courthouse stood tall, looming over them as they waited outside for their trial to begin.
Their paintbrush was their teacher and, like a teacher, guided them through the challenges they faced on the canvas.“Meow,” the cat explained, arguing why I should give her another treat.Here are a few pairings, with the personification bolded and the other literary device italicized: Writers frequently use personification in conjunction with other literary devices. More birds joined the chorus, turning the sparrow’s solo into an ensemble performance.The perfectly sun-kissed strawberries were calling my name, so I bought them to go with dessert.The image of a cozy hammock on a tropical beach spoke enticingly to him.Take a look at some of the different ways you can work personification into your writing: You might come across personification expressed as a verb, an adjective, or even a whole phrase. Personification isn’t limited to one part of speech or type of phrase. The child’s stare begged me to take him out for ice cream even though I’d already said no.Coming home from the lake empty-handed, I figured the fish colluded to avoid me.She sat down at the tired, overworked desk.That non-human can be an object, an animal, or even an idea or a concept.
With personification, you emphasize a non-human’s characteristics by describing them with human attributes. Other common literary devices include synecdoches, metaphor, and onomatopoeia. Personification is one of the many literary devices writers use to make their writing more engaging. Write with Grammarly What is personification?