The Things They Carried: Personification 2 key examples

In the story, Sanders claims that the men begin to hear "wacked-out music" that "comes right out of the rocks." He uses personification, saying it is as though the mountains were "tuned in to Radio fucking Hanoi." Eventually, they start hearing what resembles a cocktail party:

And the whole time, in the background, there’s still that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it’s the mountains. Follow me? The rock—it’s talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam—it truly talks.

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Throughout the story, it's important to Sanders to emphasize that he isn't expressing himself figuratively. The men do not feel as though the animals, rock, fog, grass, mongooses, trees, and monkeys are talking. Rather, the men really feel as though the music and voices come from the nature around them—that the place "truly talks."

It is worth noting that, even if they feel sure that nature is talking, it is not in a language that the American soldiers understand. The men cannot understand what's being said, and they don't feel as though they're being spoken to. Ultimately, the scariest part is the incomprehensible nature of the sounds—which also serves as a reminder that they're in a place in which they do not belong. As intruders, the American soldiers speak neither the language of the people nor of the landscape. They have a clear sense of where the sounds are coming from, but no idea what they mean.

In the story's exposition, the narrator writes that "It was Sunday and it was summer, and the town seemed pretty much the same." It is evident to the reader that, upon returning from the war, Bowker feels very different. He reflects on who he was and the thoughts that preoccupied him when he was in high school, when "there had not been a war." He then jumps much further back into history, reminding himself that "there had always been the lake." Tracing the lake's geological history all the way back to when the Wisconsin glacier dug it out, he imbues it with a mythological, almost divine presence. The narrator then personifies the lake, describing it as "a good audience for silence." Bowker takes some comfort from the lake's existence, as though it were a kind of companion as he circles around it.

However, the lake does not simply keep company and look on passively. As the story continues, the narrator reveals—with further personification—that the lake gave Bowker an ear infection "that almost kept him out of the war" and that it "had drowned his friend Max Arnold, keeping him out of the war entirely." The narrator does not write that Max had drowned in the lake, but rather that it is something that the lake did to him. This contributes to the impression that lake is an active force, mystically involved in Bowker's life.

The personification extends to the town as well. While Bowker keeps driving in circles, he feels more and more remote from his surroundings. In a certain passage, the narrator describes the town as though it were a person:

[...] the place looked as if it had been hit by nerve gas, everything still and lifeless, even the people. The town could not talk, and would not listen. “How’d you like to hear about the war?” he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt. [...] It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know.

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The detail about the nerve gas illustrates the lethargy of Bowker's hometown—as a place, but also the people in it. On the one hand, the town's stillness contrasts with Bowker, who is in constant motion. On the other hand, Bowker himself is sitting still in a car, driving in the same circles for hours. He fixates on how the town has not changed and will not change, but ultimately doesn't seem to be going anywhere himself.

Bowker wants the town to communicate with him, but he feels that it "could not talk" and "would not listen." The first clause of this sentence does not initially seem like a part of the personification, since towns can't talk, anyway. The second clause, however, gives the town volition: the narrator suggests that the town is capable of listening, but does not want to. Bowker knows that there's no point in asking the town if it wants to hear about the war, because it will simply blink and shrug. Brisk and polite, the town is lifeless and blissfully unaware, just as the people around Bowker. As a result, he has no one to share his memories or emotions with.