Wednesday 31 December 2014

Is there any use of personification?

Yes. In fact, Sonnet 65 is brimming with personification! Here are all the instances of this particular device that we see in the poem:


1. "sad mortality"


The speaker is attributing a human emotion, sadness, to the nonhuman concept of mortality.


2. "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea"


Here, the idea is that beauty might be able to plea, or beg. That's a human activity, again attributed to an abstract concept: beauty.


...

Yes. In fact, Sonnet 65 is brimming with personification! Here are all the instances of this particular device that we see in the poem:


1. "sad mortality"


The speaker is attributing a human emotion, sadness, to the nonhuman concept of mortality.


2. "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea"


Here, the idea is that beauty might be able to plea, or beg. That's a human activity, again attributed to an abstract concept: beauty.


3. "summer's honey breath hold out"


The speaker personifies the summer, saying it has "breath" (which is something that humans have, not periods of time).


4. "the wreckful siege of battering days"


Saying that days can siege someone is another instance of personification: it's giving the human power of fighting a war or launching an attack to the nonhuman concept of "days."


5. "Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?"


In the line above, "his" means "Time's." The line personifies "Time," saying it has a swift foot, like a human might have.


You might point to a few more examples of personification in this poem, such as in the line that implies that Time has the power to decay--but to me, these examples stray a bit too far from the definition of personification to be properly characterized as examples of it. "Decaying" is something that happens to us, rather than some activity that we ourselves put into effect. So whether or not you interpret that line as personification is a matter of personal perspective.


Overall, as you can see, Shakespeare's use of personification throughout this poem gives it a grand, dramatic tone, and it helps us imagine the forces of nature and human beauty as timeless, powerful entities.

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