Previous
Motifs
Definition of Personification
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the... read full definition
Personification
Explanation and Analysis—Merciless Sea:
When Helen finally makes it to the cemetery, the dead figuratively return to life through a blend of metaphor and personification. Kipling metaphorically compares the cemetery to both a sea and a field of weeds. In addition, he personifies the thousands of crosses by writing that they possess faces and by describing their motion towards her.
She did not know that Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her.
The metaphor and personification at play in this passage are entangled. This simulates Helen's own experience upon climbing the steps and encountering the totality of the cemetery "in one held breath." Just as she is overwhelmed by the sight that meets her, the reader is inundated by the multiple layers of figurative language operating at once.
In one of these figurative layers, the cemetery is a "merciless sea of black crosses." The comparison of the cemetery to a sea is a metaphor, while the diction of the word "merciless" adds an element of personification. Kipling introduces another figurative layer in the second clause of that same sentence, when the individual crosses that form the sea acquire "faces." The collection of graves is simultaneously a sea and a crowd of people staring back at Helen.
In yet another figurative layer, as Helen fails to distinguish an "order or arrangement in their mass," the graves become a "waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead." No longer just a sea, the collection of graves is also an unruly field of dead weeds. Helen sees the graves, which represent death to begin with, as weeds that have been killed. This metaphor accentuates the graves' connotation of death. The crosses are not simply inanimate objects marking the location of a dead, buried body: they are themselves dead. However, these decaying weeds do not lie motionless on the ground. Rather, they rush at her as though they were zombies. Although the sight of the cemetery is characterized by stillness, Helen understands it through metaphors of motion, like a stormy sea and a mass of reanimated weeds.
The shifting points of metaphorical comparison and personification in this passage capture Helen's inability to make sense of the sight that meets her. Focalized from her point of view, the narration jumps between comparisons to people and natural phenomena—familiar things that she can grasp more easily than death. Nevertheless, none of these comparisons prove sufficient: beyond the graves she is blinded by "a line of whiteness" that represents her inability to extract meaning from the monstrosity before her. The narrator eventually includes her in the scene, contrasting the cemetery's stillness with her pacing: "She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own."
Related Themes:
