Metaphor and Personification: Study Guide (English Literature 5.4)

A comparison is one of the most compressed ways of making meaning: say that one thing is another and the reader’s mind begins to transfer qualities from one to the other. This topic teaches you to read metaphor and personification precisely: which traits move across, which do not, and what the comparison tells us about the speaker’s perspective.

What a metaphor does

A metaphor states that one thing is another, or speaks of one thing in the terms of another. A simile does the same work with like or as. Both depend on the same mental step: the reader asks in what way is this like that?

Two points from the course matter most.

1. Metaphorical comparisons do not focus on the whole objects being compared. They focus on particular traits, qualities or characteristics of those things. When a poet calls hope “the thing with feathers”, the poem does not say hope is a bird in every respect. It asks us to take certain bird-like traits (small, perching, singing, warm, persistent) and apply them to hope. Other bird traits (needing food, building a nest) are left behind.
2. Comparisons communicate literal meaning, and may also convey a figurative meaning or transmit a perspective. The comparison tells us something about the subject and also shows how the speaker sees it: fondly, fearfully, mockingly.

A comparison can persist. An extended metaphor is created when the comparison of a main subject and a comparison subject continues through parts of a text, or the whole, and is expanded by additional details, similes and images. What is happening in the text often determines what is transferred, so an extended metaphor should be read in context.

What personification does

Personification is a type of comparison that assigns a human trait or quality to a nonhuman object, entity or idea, and thus characterises it. A sulking wind, a patient hill, a restless sea: each is treated as a character, and the reader responds to it as to a person, with sympathy, suspicion or amusement. When you analyse personification, ask which human trait is given and what character it creates.

A method: sides, traits, left behind, effect

1. Sides. Name the two things: what is being described and what it is compared to.
2. Traits. List the particular traits that the poem’s details transfer.
3. Left behind. Notice what the poem does not use; this sharpens the meaning.
4. Effect. Say what the comparison suggests about the subject and the speaker’s perspective.

Worked example 1: an extended metaphor

Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” (“Hope is the thing with feathers”), written about 1861 and published after her death, is an extended metaphor. The text below is from the Project Gutenberg edition of her Poems (published 1891), whose punctuation differs from modern editions.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

Step 1, sides. The subject is hope, an abstract idea. The comparison subject is a little bird.

Step 2, traits transferred. The details give the bird several traits. It perches in the soul (small, light, at home inside a person). It sings the tune without the words (a wordless comfort that does not argue or explain). It never stops at all (persistent). It is sweetest in the gale and survives the storm (courage and gentleness in trouble). It “kept so many warm” (a source of comfort for others).

Step 3, left behind. The bird is “little” and small, but it is never fed: “It asked a crumb of me”. The metaphor leaves out the usual need of a bird for food and care. By the final line the poem makes this absence the surprise: hope costs the speaker nothing. A trait is transferred and then one is denied.

Step 4, effect. The comparison gives an abstract idea a living shape and shows the speaker’s perspective: grateful, trusting and a little astonished. The extension through three stanzas (soul, storm, land and sea) turns a single image into an argument that hope is both fragile (“little”) and unbeatable (“never stops”), and the final refusal of the bird’s need makes hope a gift.

A model sentence. Dickinson’s metaphor transfers the bird’s smallness, song and persistence to hope, but its last line withholds the bird’s hunger (“never… asked a crumb of me”), so hope appears as a gift that gives and does not take.

Worked example 2: personification that characterises

John Keats’s “To Autumn” (1820) addresses the season as a person. In the second stanza the speaker asks who has not seen autumn “oft amid thy store” and describes it:

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

(Text as printed in nineteenth-century anthologies.)

Step 1, sides. The subject is the season autumn; the comparison subject is a person (a harvest worker), with a seated body, hair, sleep and a hook.

Step 2, traits transferred. Autumn is sitting careless (relaxed, unhurried), has hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind (gentle, even beautiful), is sound asleep and drowsed with the fume of poppies (languid, at ease), and has a reaping hook that spares the next swath and its flowers (kind, not harsh).

Step 3, left behind. The poem leaves out the harsh, grim-reaper side of a reaper’s tool; the hook is used to spare. It also leaves out the idea of autumn as the death of the year, which a grimmer poem might stress.

Step 4, effect. The personification characterises autumn as a gentle, indulgent worker pausing in his own abundance. The reader meets the end of the year as a person at rest, so the mood is of ripeness and acceptance, not of fear. The speaker’s perspective is one of affectionate admiration.

A model sentence. Keats personifies autumn as a drowsy harvester who sits “careless” and whose “hook” “spares” the next flowers, so that the end of the year is characterised as gentle, relaxed and kind.

Practising the trait list on a new comparison

Try the four steps on a single line written by Marlbridge: “My father’s silence was a locked drawer.”

Step	Working
Sides	Subject: the father’s silence. Comparison subject: a locked drawer
Traits transferred	Closed, private, something kept inside, not open to others
Left behind	A drawer is ordinary, small and made of wood; it is not hostile. The line does not suggest the silence is cruel, only shut
Effect	The speaker sees the silence as a container of unspoken things that might one day be opened, which suggests curiosity and respect more than anger

Now change one word: “My father’s silence was a locked door.” A door is larger and more of a barrier; people pass through doors, so the focus shifts from what is kept inside to what is kept out. A single noun changes which traits are transferred, which is why you should always say which traits a comparison uses and not leave them as “it shows silence”.

A good analytical sentence names the sides, the traits and the effect in one line: “By comparing his father’s silence to a locked drawer, the speaker stresses what is kept private and perhaps preserved, so the silence seems protective more than hostile.”

When personification is present, use the same structure, but name the human trait instead of the object: “By letting the radiator ‘clear its throat’ and ‘sigh’, the poem gives the machine the weary politeness of an old servant.”

Common misconceptions

• “A metaphor says the two things are identical.” It selects particular traits; other traits are not part of the comparison.
• “Only the traits that match matter.” What the poem leaves out (“never… asked a crumb”) can be as meaningful.
• “Personification just makes the description livelier.” It characterises the thing and invites a human response.
• “A metaphor always means the same thing.” Context decides what is transferred.
• “Naming the device is enough.” “This is personification” earns little without the trait, the character and the effect.
• “An extended metaphor is a list of similes.” An extended metaphor develops one comparison with additional details, building a larger meaning.

Where this leads

Topic 5.5 (study guide) turns to allusion, a comparison with something outside the poem. Practise this topic with the practice questions, review the revision notes and tick off the checklist. Complex and extended metaphor returns in Topic 8.4.