Unit 5 · Topic 5.6

5.6 Personification and allusion

Personification gives human qualities to something that isn't human, which shapes how you see it. An allusion points to something outside the text, such as a myth, a sacred text, another work of art, or a real person, place or event, and borrows its associations. Both are compact ways to add meaning.

Key terms

personification
allusion
biblical allusion
mythological allusion
association

Personification

Personification treats something that isn't human, like an object, an animal, a force of nature or an idea, as if it had human traits. "The wind whispered." "Time is a thief." "The city slept." It characterizes the thing: a whispering wind seems secretive or gentle; a thieving time seems cruel.

Ask which human trait is assigned and how it changes your view. Personifying Death as a polite gentleman creates a very different effect from personifying it as a hunter.

Allusion

An allusion is a brief reference to something outside the text that the writer expects readers to recognize. It works by bringing its associations into the new text. To analyze it, ask what the original source is about, which part of it the writer is using, and how it fits or clashes with the new situation.

Allusions can point to:

Myths and legends: calling someone's task "Sisyphean" points to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, forced to push a boulder up a hill forever.
Sacred texts: a "Garden of Eden" or a "prodigal son" brings in Bible stories.
Other literature and art: a line borrowed from Shakespeare, a reference to a famous painting or song.
Real people, places and events: a battle, a disaster, a historical figure.

When you don't recognize an allusion

On the exam, you may meet an allusion you don't know. Don't panic. Often the passage, a footnote or the introduction will explain it. If not, focus on the surrounding words and what they suggest. You can still earn full points without catching every reference.

Titles count

Titles often contain allusions. Robert Frost's "'Out, Out—'" takes its title from Macbeth's speech on hearing of his wife's death, "Out, out, brief candle!" The borrowed words bring in Macbeth's bleak view that life is short and meaningless, which sharpens the poem's story of a boy's sudden death.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Personifying death
Emily Dickinson's poem that begins "Because I could not stop for Death" (published as "The Chariot" in Poems, 1890) opens: "Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality." How does Dickinson use personification here, and to what effect?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify what's personified: Death, given the pronoun "He" and the manners of a gentleman.
2. Step 2: Identify the human traits: he "kindly stopped," picking up the speaker in a carriage, like a polite caller taking someone for a drive.
3. Step 3: Notice what's surprising. Death is usually frightening. Here he's courteous, and the speaker is too busy to stop for him.
4. Step 4: Explain the effect: the calm, polite personification makes death seem gentle and ordinary, and Immortality rides along, suggesting death is a passage, not an end.
Answer: Model paragraph: Dickinson personifies Death as a courteous gentleman caller, and the politeness of the image changes how the reader feels about dying. Death "kindly stopped" for a speaker too busy to stop for him, as if he were offering a ride to a friend. The carriage holds "but just ourselves / And Immortality," which makes the trip sound almost like a quiet outing, with Immortality along as a kind of chaperone. By giving Death good manners instead of menace, Dickinson strips away the usual terror and presents dying as a calm journey into eternity. The gentleness is also a little unsettling: the speaker accepts the ride without protest, and the reader may wonder how kind such kindness really is.
Example 2
An allusion turned against itself
Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" (written during World War I; published 1920) describes a gas attack in which a soldier dies horribly. The poem ends by telling the reader: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori." The Latin comes from the Roman poet Horace and means "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." How does Owen use the allusion?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify the source: Horace, an ancient poet whose line was often quoted to honor soldiers and inspire young men to fight.
2. Step 2: Notice the frame. Owen calls the line "The old Lie," the opposite of honoring it.
3. Step 3: Connect to the poem: after the images of a man choking to death, "sweet and fitting" sounds monstrous.
4. Step 4: Explain the effect: the allusion brings in centuries of patriotic tradition, then the poem rejects it.
Answer: Model paragraph: Owen alludes to Horace's famous line only to call it "The old Lie." The Latin phrase carried centuries of authority; it had been used to tell young men that dying for their country was "sweet and fitting." By placing it at the end of a poem full of a soldier choking on gas, Owen forces the reader to measure the old words against what he has just witnessed. Addressed to people who repeat the phrase "To children ardent for some desperate glory," the allusion becomes an accusation. Owen borrows the authority of classical tradition precisely to tear it down.

Common mistakes

Identifying personification without explaining which human trait is assigned and why it matters.
Spotting an allusion but not explaining what the original source contributes.
Worrying about an allusion you don't recognize instead of using the context around it.

On the exam

Questions may ask what a personification suggests about how the speaker views something. Focus on the specific human quality.
In essays, an allusion explained well can help situate your reading in a broader context, one route to the sophistication point.

Connected topics

Videos

"What is Personification?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What is an Allusion?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
What is an Allusion?
English NerdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Death, Personified (Feat. Lindsay Ellis) | It’s Lit! | PBS Digital Studios
PBS DocumentariesWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
What is an Allusion? Lesson and Activity
TolentinoTeaching (Resources for English Teachers)Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

5 questions on 5.6 Personification and allusion. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson, “The Chariot” (“Because I could not stop for Death”), as printed in Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)

Question 1 of 5

Death is personified in the poem as

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,

As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—

He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—

The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Robert Frost, “Out, Out—” (1916), from Mountain Interval (1916)

Question 2 of 5

The poem's title, ‘Out, Out—,’ alludes to a speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth that calls life a ‘brief candle.’ The allusion most likely suggests

Question 3 of 5

The descriptions of the saw, which “snarled and rattled” and “Leaped out at the boy's hand” (lines 1 and 16), mainly

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

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,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats, “To Autumn” (1820). “winnowing”: separating grain from husks. “gleaner”: a person gathering leftover grain after a harvest. “sallows”: willows. “bourn”: region. “croft”: a small enclosed field.

Question 4 of 5

In the second stanza (lines 12–22), autumn is personified chiefly as

Question 5 of 5

The question “Where are the songs of Spring?” followed by “Think not of them, thou hast thy music too” (lines 23–24) mainly serves to

0 of 5 answered