A Christmas Carol
- Personification Was Well Deployed by Charles Dickens -

Personification is a Curiosity Creator

 

Personification is when we speak of non-living things as if they were a person. Humans love gossip! So when anything appears to have private thoughts or intentions, writing becomes more interesting. The following quote is one of my favorite ever examples of both Dickens and personification. I first heard it read aloud on a BBC radio show and I never forgot it. It’s literary perfection! 

 

Quote one commentary: 

Every part of the weather is personified in a way that tells us everything about the miserable protagonist, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. Even these literal forces of nature cannot impact him in any direction, and hence it is the spirits our author must send to visit the old man, to shock his heart back into rhythm and resuscitate his soul. 

 

Quote one: [Stave one, Marley’s Ghost]

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“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.”

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Quote two commentary: 

In our second quote, again it is the weather that is personified. Again, the weather appears to be at a loss as to how to influence Scrooge.

 

Quote two: [Stave one, Marley’s Ghost]

“The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.”

 

Quote three commentary: 

Here Scrooge has started to fret and his dressing gown is personified as having a 'suspicious attitude’.

 

Quote three: [Stave one, Marley’s Ghost]

“…nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.” 
 

Quote four commentary: 

In this next quote it is Scrooge’s ‘preposerous’ clock that reflects his inner world of quiet panic, its second hand described as having a rapid pulse.

 

Quote four: [Stave two, The First of Three]

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve: and stopped.

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Quote five commentary: 

Five quotes on personification may seem a tad greedy, yet on reading this next one you’ll see that it’s worth it. Between the sky and the chimneys the London sky is alive with the dirty chaos of Victorian industrialism. 

 

Stave five: [Scrooge’s Third Visitor]

“The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content.”
 

Summary

Personification in combination with other literary techniques brings on the  ‘reader swoon.’ To read such simple scenes told with such casual mastery is why people find a cosy corner with their favourite book on rainy weekends. No texts. No adverts. No interruptions  - just ‘papery wings all set to fly,’ well anchored prose as inky songs and the kind of ‘time-travel adventures’ that are full-on brain parkour.  

 

Learning Activities

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1. Use the prose above as inspiration to write your own personified scenes. Will it be an item of furniture, the weather, a city or a forest? What emotions will you assign to them? Why do they feel that way? How does it add to the mood you are creating? Are you also using imagery, mood words and symbolism?

 

2. The Descriptionari.com pages “Bicycles,” “Lamp,” “Kettle” and “Hope's Pen” are wonderful for personification. After reading them, choose your favorite passages as inspiration for your own personified paragraph.