personification

Personification is a figure of speech in which a human quality is assigned to something non-human, such as an object or an abstract concept.

Examples of personification in Canadian literature

“There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently � Light pours down upon it from the sun, true, but also heat rises, from the flowers themselves, you can feel it: like holding your hand an inch above an arm, a shoulder. It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in.”
–Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Demented wind fled keening past the house: a wail through the eaves that died every minute or two.”
–Sinclair Ross, “The Lamp at Noon”

“The woods are getting ready to sleep–they are not yet asleep but they are disrobing and are having all sorts of little bed-time conferences and whisperings and good-nights.”
–L. M. Montgomery, The Green Gables Letters

“O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west, / Sleep, sleep, / By your mountain steep, /Or down where the prairie grasses sweep! / Now fold in slumber your laggard wings, / For soft is the song my paddle sings.”
–E. Pauline Johnson, “The Song My Paddle Sings”

“Who is that in the tall grasses running / Beside her, near the water? / She cannot see there / Time that pursued her / In the deep grasses so fast / And faster / And caught her, / My foolish daughter.”
–Irving Layton, “Song for Naomi”