Introduction
Personification simply refers to the assigning of human qualities to either tangible or intangible things that are not human. As it is with other figures of speech, literal artists, in their works and for a number of purposes, mostly use personification alongside other figures of speech. Poets and playwrights, alongside other writers, employ these solely to emphasize a certain point, clarify it or even express a more obvious occurrence in a unique and peculiar manner to attract attention and inspire deeper thinking from the readers. Personification, as used in poetry, has enabled poets to achieve a number of effects. Allen Ginsberg’s poem America is among the best examples to use when elaborating the various effects of personification in poetry. For instance, personification creates the mood in a poem as well as clarifies the moral lesson that the poet targets to put across.
The effects of personification
Considering the time of the composition of the poem America, that is in the 1950s when militarism and McCarthyism dominated the political scene in the United States, poetry was an important tool to enlighten the masses. Ginsberg is one of the most famous Beat Generation poets who used poetry as a form of protest to make the voices of those Americans who were against the cold war heard. He also championed the rights of the gay minorities and the liberalization of drugs openly through his poetry. Allen Ginsberg was successful in the manner he used personification in driving his point home. This is because of the several effects that personification has in this poem. These include setting the mood of the poem, making the poem more dramatic, creating a personal relationship between the readers and the poem, and making the poem believable through the consequent associations with reality.
Setting the mood of the poem
Allen Ginsberg effectively uses personification to set the mood of the poem. An example is “…when will you look at yourself through the grave” (Ginsberg line 10). This acts to set the overall mood of the poem in that people tend to identify more with the solemn mood associated with graves. The fear that was evident those days due to the possible implication when one presented his views that were not considered as acceptable to the American regime is also clearly portrayed through the effective use of personification. From the poem, the line “I’m sick of your insane demands”. (Ginsberg line 14) qualifies in depicting this claim. Society was such that it forced people to remain silent and refrain from shouting about their rights and expectations for the fear of the issues of disloyalty to the authorities and the most favored culture. Personification is a working criterion of setting the drama in a poem in the poet’s endeavor to drive his/her point to the majority.
Making the poem more dramatic
Ginsberg attracts a wide range of readers to his work by personification to enhance the action of the poem America. This is through engaging America in a lengthy monologue as if demanding for response or even waiting to observe the possible reaction. He does this through a series of rhetorical questions that engage America directly as if He was a human being (Hardesty and Michele Para 4). This makes every line of the poem have a memorable impact on the mind of the readers.in the fifth line Ginsberg says to America “Go fuck you with the atomic bomb”. This line shows clearly despite there being restrictions on people to talk about what they felt about the cold war activities, Ginsberg, as it was the case with other scholars who had taken a similar stand, did not care about the authoritative regime’s possible actions on their reactions. This clearly depicts the bitter reactions of those who were not in support of the cold war. Personification too attracts the attention of people bringing them closer to the author’s masterwork.
Enabling the readers to create a more intimate relationship with the work
Personification as used by Ginsberg in his poem America makes his readers create a more intimate relationship with the work. This is by the fact that people can easily identify with aspects considered human. For instance in the line “you should have seen me reading max”, Ginsberg makes his readers take the point of view of America to be able to understand clearly his views about communism. He tries to make his readers understand that, one can be a communist and an American citizen at the same time. Bales claims that the use of personification makes it possible for him to pass this message to his readers with the aim of making them understand his motives (194). This makes this poem a success in pushing the intended agenda, which was mostly to lure people to oppose the cold war considering that the world was recovering from World War II. With the situation being hard for homosexuals due to the homophobia that prevailed during those days, Ginsberg gives hope to his fellow gays in the poem. “America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel” (Ginsberg line 74). In this line, Ginsberg uses personification to address the American regime on behalf of his comrades who were tired of living their lifestyles as a secret. This makes it easy for those who were in his situation to identify with this poem. In addition, personification induces believing within people.
Making the poem more believable
The fact that personification works through attributing human characteristics to objects is worth considering when interrogating the connection of a work of art with reality. This is because people tend to identify more with human feelings, actions, and thoughts when attributed to inanimate things. For instance in the poem America, Ginsberg associates human feelings such as emotions to describe the state of events in the united states in the 1950s. For instance, the line “Are you going to let your emotional life run by times magazine?”(Ginsberg, line 39) addresses this issue showing the expectations set for the ideal American citizen during those days. Ginsberg goes ahead to work more in making the poem more believable by comparing himself to America and interrogating the problems of the American society as they were his problems.
Conclusion
The use of personification in poetry, as seen in Ginsberg’s poem, is responsible for the success of the medium, especially when used to influence other people. This is through the connections that it has with human psychology, which enables people to develop a sense of connection to things that show a relationship with human nature. This explains why the use of poetry to influence change has been successful in the history of humankind.
Works cited
Bales, Miles. Ginsberg: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford Publishers, 2000. Print.
Ginsberg, Allen. America, 2009. Web.
Hardesty, Michele. Writers of the World Get Together: Allen Ginsberg in Sandinista Nicaragua. New York: Word Press, 2003. Print.