Personification is giving human or near-human characteristics to inanimate objects, abstract concepts, or actions. It enlivens writing and makes the abstract more relatable. It’s common in everyday speech and literature. Personification helps people understand complex concepts like God or deities by making them more relatable.
Personification is the act in speech and writing of giving inanimate objects, abstract concepts, or actions human or near-human characteristics. This is different from anthropomorphism, which gives animals both human personality and behavior. It’s a kind of metaphor, as it’s a metaphorical way of enlivening writing and making the abstract more relatable.
While personification is a frequent literary device in poetry, it is also so in everyday common speech. For example, a person might look at a clock and say, “Time just slipped by.” This suggests that the concept of “time” has a will of its own, and the person was trying to fight with time to stay. However, time “ran away”.
Even small children use this device on a regular basis. A child might be asked if she has thrown a pencil. The child may answer, “I didn’t throw it. He launched himself.” While the child here uses personification as an evasion tactic, he is still giving the pencil somewhat human characteristics that he does not possess.
In the literature, it is easy to find examples: fog “creeps”, thoughts “explode”, trees “threaten”, and clouds “assume”. Death becomes a “messenger”. These examples are all ways a writer can make ordinary objects or abstract concepts essentially come alive and provide a more emotional feel for the reader. The examples above also give the human characteristics of things, which relate to the reader’s understanding of the human world and human actions.
In In Context magazine, Joseph Campbell gave an interview in 1985 in which he suggested that personification was a way that those who followed a religion came to terms with the huge and abstract concept of God. Of course, the Bible says that l man is made in the “image of God”. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this immediately personifies God: he is male and has the appearance of a man.
This makes it easier for people to stick to the concept of a personal God, as he is like a father, who closely resembles human beings. Earlier religious concepts also suggest the personification of a number of things present in the environment or in the stars.
Animism sees aspects of the divine in simple natural elements, such as the sun, moon, trees or river. By ascribing human intent or characteristics to these objects, one achieves a better understanding of what constitutes a deity or deities.
If the sun laughs when it is high in the sky, or the moon sleeps, these astral bodies are suddenly human and therefore a person can relate to them. Conversely, when the sun is described in purely scientific terms, it often becomes remote and impersonal. It can be understood scientifically, but it is much more difficult to “get” emotionally.
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