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Personification Vs Hyperbole

Personification is a type of metaphor that describes non-human or inanimate objects in human terms to make scenes or characters more engaging. It provides personality, emotion, and life to otherwise lifeless descriptions. For example, describing the sun stretching its arms and smiling conveys a positive feeling, while saying it glared angrily conveys negativity. Hyperbole purposefully exaggerates to emphasize or be more creative and humorous, though it is not meant literally. It is commonly used in everyday speech and creative writing to make descriptions more amusing and original.

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73 views2 pages

Personification Vs Hyperbole

Personification is a type of metaphor that describes non-human or inanimate objects in human terms to make scenes or characters more engaging. It provides personality, emotion, and life to otherwise lifeless descriptions. For example, describing the sun stretching its arms and smiling conveys a positive feeling, while saying it glared angrily conveys negativity. Hyperbole purposefully exaggerates to emphasize or be more creative and humorous, though it is not meant literally. It is commonly used in everyday speech and creative writing to make descriptions more amusing and original.

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Đào Quyên
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Personification

Definition: Personification is a kind of metaphor in which you describe an


inanimate object, abstract thing, or non-human animal in human terms. It is
used to create more interesting and engaging scenes or characters.
Example  1
1. Science-fiction novels were his constant companions.
Only a person or animal can literally be a ‘companion’; books are just objects. But
this personification tells us that the books meant a lot to him, like close friends,
and probably brought him happiness, like friends would.
Example  2
The tired old car coughed and wheezed and crawled down the street.
This sort of description, common in literature, uses several human qualities to
create a vivid image of a very old car for the reader.
The Importance of Using Personification
Personification provides personality, energy, will, and emotion to an otherwise
lifeless scene.
For example, “The sun rose” is a literal description. A more interesting description
could be, “The sun stretched its golden arms, climbed above the mountains, and
smiled down on us.” Giving the sun “golden arms” creates a vivid image of the
sun’s rays and “climbed” makes the sun more like a person getting out of bed.
“Smiled” gives you a positive feeling about the day. If the author wanted to
convey a negative feeling, he or she could have said “the sun glared down at us
angrily.”
Personification usually expresses characters’ feelings and gives more life to a
scene.

Hyperbole
Definition: Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which an author or speaker
purposely and obviously exaggerates to an extreme. It is used for emphasis or as a
way of making a description more creative and humorous. It is important to note
that hyperbole is not meant to be taken literally; the audience knows it’s an
exaggeration.
Example 1
She’s going to die of embarrassment.
This does not mean that the girl is going to get sick or that her heart will stop due
to embarrassment. Instead, the speaker is using hyperbole to emphasize just how
embarrassed she’s going to feel.
Example 2
  That suitcase weighed a ton!

In this example, the speaker claims that a suitcase weighed a ton–two thousand
pounds! Of course, this does not mean that the suitcase literally weighed a ton.
The speaker is using hyperbole to emphasize that the suitcase feels very  heavy.

The Importance of Hyperbole

Hyperbole is often used in day-to-day speech. For example, upon seeing your
friend after a long absence, you may say, “I haven’t seen you in a million years!”
You and your friend both know that this is not literally the case. Here, hyperbole
is used to emphasize how long it feels since you last saw your friend.

Hyperbole is also often used in creative writing just to make a description more
amusing or creative. For example, it is more interesting to say, “she had a brain
the size of planet” than “she was really smart.” It is always better to describe
something in an original way and hyperbole is a great opportunity to inject feeling
and humor into a description.

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