Personification: Giving human characteristics to nonhuman objects.
Example: “Those hours, that with gentle work did frame” (line 1)
“…For never-resting time leads summer on to hideous winter and confounds him there.” (line 5-6)
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 5. ED. Amanda Mabillard. Shakespeare online. 12 Nov. 2013. Retrieved from
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/5.html
Function: In the first line of the sonnet by Shakespeare, the speaker commences by conveying the unyielding aspect of “time”. “Time” is very crucial because it determines who are and it shapes you. Because “time” is “unfair” Shakespeare uses personification to portray its significance.
For instance, “Those boats are restless” (Woodford). This is a use of personification because boats cannot be restless. Another example of personification is “...someday I will let my ships taste freedom” (Woodford). In the short story, Uncle Timothy says that he wants his ships to “taste freedom”. This use of personification is trying to say that the ships are always tied up and not used.
Literary Device Analysis #3: Personification Personification is a literary device that applies human or living traits to a non-human or non-living thing. For example, if one said “ the wind whistled through the trees,” they would be using personification as wind can’t actually whistle. Whistling is a human characteristic or action. One sentence of the text is “flies tapping at a far-off windowpane” (Doerr p. 13, lines 2-3)
Personification is ascribing human characteristics to non living things, and help's make a clear picture of what is happening in a moment. William Golding an author of many book, most notably The Lord of the Flies is no stranger to using personification in his books. When describing a fire Golding writes " the smoke increased, shifted, rolled outward" (Golding 44). The word choice in this sentence is an example of personification because, the fire is being made out to be rolling, and a fire can't roll. Another example of personification Golding makes is "Acres of black and yellow smoke rolled steadily to the sea"(Golding 44).
Personification is a literary mode used when the author gives an inanimate object a human quality. This also helps Roethke to create his imagery. He even gives the dirt on the basement floor life:
Personification adds human-like characteristics to non-animated objects. Shakespeare uses personification in Macbeth to add internal conflict to the play. In Act 2, scene 1 of Macbeth, Macbeth begins to talk to the dagger as if it were a living being, “Is this a dagger I see in front of me, with its handle/ aimed toward my hand?
In Sonnet XX, the author reveals to the readers that he has a new found love but he finds difficulty in pursuing it. The reader sees the battle the speaker takes on as he contemplates what he should do. The author’s use of personification, conflict, and various poetic devices all come together to show how society can trigger the struggle one faces trying to accept the fact that they cannot be with the person they love. Within the Sonnet, personification is used to bring nature to life and show how she created this human the speaker desires but he cannot have because of societal standards.
Personification is when non humans are given human characteristics. In An American Childhood, Dillard used any examples of personification. For instance, Dillard stated, “The walls squeaked, the pipes knocked, the screen door trembled, the furnace banged, and the radiators clanged. The walls, pipes, screen door, furnace, and radiators are not humans (17). Even though they are not living the author gave them human characteristics to make the book more interesting. There were many examples of personification in that sentence, which catches the eye of many readers.
Another example of personification is “ The wind begun to rock the grass.” The wind is blowing the grass, so the grass is moving
As opposed to the majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the series that are addressed to an unnamed young man, sonnet 60 deals largely with the relentless approach of time and its war against humanity rather than love. In this sonnet, the breaking of the poetic form expected of a sonnet is utilized to not only enhance the specific localized metaphors in the poem, but the overall thematic content as well. By taking the traditional iambic pentameter and presenting moments of disruption, this poem draws attention to the dramatization of Time’s march against humanity, and also to the ability of the writer of this poem who appears in the final couplet. In this paper, I intend to look specifically at the utilization of trochaic feet in order to examine the ways in which the manipulation of metrical devices can create meaning.
Shakespeare’s sonnet 60 expresses the inevitable end that comes with time and uses this dark truth to express his hopefulness that his poetry will carry his beloved’s beauty and worth into the future in some way so that it may never die. This love poem is, as all sonnets are, fourteen lines. Three quatrains form these fourteen lines, and each quatrain consists of two lines. Furthermore, the last two lines that follow these quatrains are known as the couplet. This sonnet has the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, as most Shakespearean sonnets follow. In each of the three quatrains, Shakespeare discusses a different idea. In this particular sonnet, the idea is how time continues to pass on, causing everything to die. The couplet connects these ideas to one central theme, this theme being Shakespeare’s hope for the beauty of his beloved’s immortality through his poetry’s continuation into future times.
Personification is a figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes. The non-human objects are portrayed in such a way that we feel they have the ability to act like human beings. Personification is the figurative language that is giving the attribute of human beings to animal, an object or a concept. It is sub type of metaphor, an implied comparison in which the figurative term of the comparison is always human being. (Perrine, 1977: 64).
The next stylistic device is personification. By definition personification is to think of or represent as having human qualities or life. Woolf applies this device to
Poets and authors alike evoke emotion and pictures from one single word. The imagery and thoughts put into the readers’ heads by these different writers are the base of one’s creativity and imagination while reading the author’s work of art. William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known poets of all time that is able to elicit these emotions from the reader to allow the reader to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to accomplish with his poems. Shakespeare keeps his audience entertained with a whopping 154 sonnets, each having a different meaning and imagery associated with it. Sonnet 18, “[Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day]”, and Sonnet 55, “[Not Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments]”, are both one of Shakespeare’s most famous works. Shakespeare uses these sonnets to explore the powerful relationship between humanity, art, and time.
Naturally, Shakespeare’s very first Sonnet deals with themes of procreation and immortality, literally and figuratively birthing his series of Sonnets. Ideas of Genesis, or the creation of the world, show strong traces throughout the poem and serve as the piece’s main focus according to literary critic Helen Vendler. The sonnet also deals with the logistics of beauty; we want the most beautiful people to have children, so their beauty will be preserved forever—when the parent dies, the child they leave behind will remind us of their own beauty. Shakespeare utilizes metaphors in his language to help promote this idea, for example the image of a bud, growing until it inevitably dies and diminishes. Unlike flowers, Shakespeare tells us here that we humans have the opportunity to keep this beauty everlasting. The very beginning of Shakespeare’s infamous series of sonnets, Sonnet 1 celebrates the beauty of procreation and offers a plea for humanity centered around our duty as humans to procreate and let our legacies live on, so our spirits can live vicariously through generations of our children.
A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.