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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
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Picture the Forest:
In the highly descriptive opening of Book 1, Orleanna describes the Congolese jungle with imagery, similes, personification, and metaphor. This figurative language in the following passage forms a motif that will recur throughout the book: a living, personified land that reminds readers of Africa's unique environment, culture, history, and future.
First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This forest eats itself and lives forever.
Orleanna seems to speak directly to the reader, asking them to identify with the forest and imagine themselves within it. She personifies the jungle such that it has a conscience and eyes in its trees. The trees are metaphorically columns, as if part of an awe-inspiring structure. In the same sentence, Orleanna uses a simile to describe the trees as "like muscular animals," further personifying the forest and emphasizing how alive it is. The frogs are metaphorically "war-painted," and a simile compares them to skeletons. The vines personified into stranglers of other vines. The ant queen is personified into a "ravenous" monarch. Even seedlings on the jungle floor are personified into a choir; Orleanna gives them necks and implies they have agency. All of this imagery not only helps the reader imagine this foreign setting, but also sets up one of the themes of the novel: life and death are deeply intertwined.
Book 2, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Ruth May's Mongoose:
In one of the lighter moments of the novel, Ruth May describes her pet mongoose. Her childish Southern dialect, allusion to a children's book, and personification of her strange pet all illustrate her innocence:
Nobody ever even gave me the mongoose. It came to the yard and looked at me. Every day it got closer and closer. One day the mongoose came in the house and then every day after that. It likes me the best. It won’t tolerate anybody else. Leah said we had to name it Ricky Ticky Tabby but no sir, it’s mine and I’m a-calling it Stuart Little. That is a mouse in a book. I don’t have a snake because a mongoose wants to kill a snake. Stuart Little killed the one by the kitchen house and that was a good business, so now Mama lets it come on in the house.
Ruth May personifies her pet mongoose by describing it as if it chose her (rather than the other way around). She also gives the mongoose a human-like attitude: "It won't tolerate anybody else." When Leah suggests naming it "Ricky Ticky Tabby," she is alluding to the short story by Rudyard Kipling, in which a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi protects an English family living in India from snakes. This story is also set in a colonial environment, but is uncritical of colonialism, unlike The Poisonwood Bible. Ruth May's mongoose name is less loaded: Stuart Little is a mouse from a children's book. Ruth May's Southern dialect is especially strong in this passage: she says things like "no sir," "a-calling," and "Mama lets it come on in the house," which indicate to reader her foreignness in the Congo.
Related Themes:
Book 3, Chapter 26
Explanation and Analysis—No Wings:
In Book 3, Orleanna describes her childhood and eventual marriage to Nathan. As the reader already knows from the rest of the novel, Nathan has treated Orleanna poorly. As if to defend or explain her choices (perhaps to the reader or to Ruth May), Orleanna uses metaphor, personification, and simple to describe why she put up with Nathan's behavior for so long:
Like Methuselah I cowered beside my cage, and though my soul hankered after the mountain, I found, like Methuselah, I had no wings. This is why, little beast. I’d lost my wings. Don’t ask me how I gained them back—the story is too unbearable. I trusted too long in false reassurances, believing as we all want to do when men speak of the national interest, that it’s also ours. In the end, my lot was cast with the Congo. Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.
In a simile, Orleanna compares herself to the family's pet bird, Methuselah. When Nathan opened Methuselah's cage, expecting the bird to fly away, Methuselah refused out of fear and disuse of his wings. Orleanna sees her own willingness to follow and obey Nathan in the same light: she feels she is simply not used to exerting her own agency and therefore doesn't. Metaphorically, then, she "had no wings." Orleanna also personifies the Congo into a "barefoot bride of men" who promised the Congo safety and growth but instead robbed the country. This comparison reminds the reader of Orleanna's own past as an unsuspecting, obedient, and impoverished bride to Nathan.
Related Themes:
Book 4, Chapter 52
Explanation and Analysis—Hunting:
In Book 4, Adah describes the climax of the animal hunt with imagery, metaphors, and personification.
As the ring burned smaller we suddenly caught sight of its other side, the red-orange tongues and black ash closing in. The looming shapes of animals bunched up inside: antelopes, bushbucks, broad-headed warthogs with warthog children running behind them. A troop of baboons ran with arched tails flying as they zigzagged, not yet understanding their entrapment. Thousands of insects beat the air to a pulpy soup of animal panic.
Several different animals are personified: the "warthog children," the baboons that do not understand their imminent death, and the insects that panic. This allows the reader to sympathize with the animals' predicament, and it also emphasizes how life and death are connected: only by burning these innocent animals alive can the villagers survive. A metaphor makes the air, filled with insects, into a "pulpy soup," while the insects swarm so thickly that the air seems to turn to liquid. The visual imagery, which includes this metaphor as well as the descriptions of the animals and the fire, gives the reader a vivid picture of what this unique hunt looks like:
Others would not come out and so they burned: small flame-feathered birds, the churning insects, and a few female baboons who had managed against all odds to carry their pregnancies through the drought. With their bellies underslung with precious clinging babies, they loped behind the heavy-maned males, who would try to save themselves, but on reaching the curtain of flame where the others passed through, they drew up short. Crouched low. Understanding no choice but to burn with their children.
The baboons are further personified here: the females have "precious clinging babies," and the males "[understand] no choice but to burn with their children." The word choice here is subtle, but it effectively humanizes and creates sympathy for these animals. They do not have "offspring" or "juveniles" but instead have "precious clinging babies." The male baboons likewise seem to eventually have enough intelligence to resign themselves to death.
Book 6, Chapter 77
Explanation and Analysis—The Land Howls:
In Book 6, Leah uses multiple literary devices (metaphor, simile, personification, imagery, and idiom) to explain the natural environment of the Congo and the unique farming techniques it requires:
Clearing a rain forest to plant annuals is like stripping an animal first of its fur, then its skin. The land howls. Annual crops fly on a wing and a prayer. And even if you manage to get a harvest, why, you need roads to take it out! Take one trip overland here and you’ll know forever that a road in the jungle is a sweet, flat, impossible dream. The soil falls apart. The earth melts into red gashes like the mouths of whales. Fungi and vines throw a blanket over the face of the dead land. It’s simple, really. Central Africa is a rowdy society of flora and fauna that have managed to balance together on a trembling geologic plate for ten million years: when you clear off part of the plate, the whole slides into ruin.
This description of the jungle helps the reader understand how its composition influences farming and life in the Congo. The visual imagery of red soil, fungi, and vines allows us to imagine this elaborate and fragile balance of plants and animals. Leah personifies the jungle, first with simile in which she compares "clearing a rain forest" to "stripping an animal first of its fur, then its skin," which indicates how abhorrent she finds deforesting. The personified land "howls," has a face, and can die. Another simile compares the destroyed soil to "the mouths of whales." Metaphorically, "fungi and vines throw a blanket" over the destroyed earth. Finally, the "rowdy society of flora and fauna" evokes a crowded, lively, and barely cooperative community.
Leah also uses the idiom "fly on a wing and a prayer" to describe the often unsuccessful attempt to grow annual crops. (As opposed to perennial plants, annuals must be replanted each harvest, so they are not permanent parts of the land.) To fly on a wing and a prayer means to attempt something that will probably not succeed, like a plane landing with only one wing left.
She metaphorically calls this ecosystem a "trembling geologic plate." This is also literal, since Africa (like all continents) is shaped by the movement of tectonic plates. But the plate becomes metaphorical when Leah describes deforestation in the Congo as "[clearing] off part of the plate" and creating an imbalance. This imbalance causes the plate to tilt and everything to fall off, just as deforestation hurts the rest of the environment in the Congo.
Book 7
Explanation and Analysis—New Life:
In Book 7, the reader gets a glimpse into a hopeful future for the Congo. Mobutu, stricken with cancer, has given up his dictatorship of the Congo, and an unknown narrator describes the hope this fresh start inspires with metaphorical language and personification:
Thirty-five years of sleep like death, and now the murdered land draws a breath, moves its fingers, takes up life through its rivers and forests. The eyes in the trees are watching. The animals open their mouths and utter joyful, astonishing words. The enslaved parrot Methuselah, whose flesh has been devoured now by many generations of predators, is forcing his declaration of independence through the mouths of leopards and civet cats.
In this passage, the personified land revives itself from its previous murder and becomes alive again. The murder of the land is a metaphor that could refer either to the destruction of Congolese self-determination or the destruction of the actual land for food and natural resources (or both). Personified animals "utter joyful, astonishing words," which makes the natural environment of Congo sound like a being with agency that desires self-determination and a capable government as much as the Congolese people do.
Methuselah, the Prices' pet parrot who was eaten after Nathan set him free, also returns as a symbol in this passage. Recall that Methuselah repeated the words and phrases of the Price family, the villagers, and Brother Fowles. Alongside curse words and Kikongo greetings, Methuselah also apparently picked up the call for Congolese independence. This reference to Methuselah could be read as a metaphor for those killed or harmed in fight for independence: despite their deaths, the call for independence survives, and their ideas continue to spread.
Related Themes:
