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Pathos
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
One (1934): Something Rising
Explanation and Analysis—The Radio:
In Section One, Doerr again uses personification as a means of characterizing the radio, affording the machine both agency and presence:
Is it any wonder, asks the radio, that courage, confidence, and optimism in growing measure
fill the German people? Is not the flame of a new faith rising from this sacrificial readiness?
In this passage, the radio is able to speak and ask questions, as though it is a human being with agency over its own voice and not simply a communication device. This personification represents Werner's point of view: he does not consider the radio an inanimate object, but a living, breathing thing—a means to activate his imagination. Werner connects intimately with machines, radios in particular, more so than he does with his peers in the orphanage or military.
Doerr uses personification in the above excerpt to humanize the radio; simultaneously, this use of language serves to dehumanize or depersonalize the individual with whose "voice" the radio speaks. This is appropriate given the fact that this particular speaker, or radio host, simply operates as a mouth for the German propaganda machine, repeating the honeyed lies, half-truths, and promises fed to it. While the person on the other end of the radio is human, they function as a machine and are thus depersonalized.
Related Themes:
One (1934): Bigger Faster Brighter
Explanation and Analysis—Mouth of the Country:
In the following excerpt from Section One, Doerr engages in the common literary technique of personifying countries. In this instance, he personifies the country of Germany, ostensibly united under Nazi rule:
Seven days a week the miners drag coal into the light and the coal is pulverized and fed into
coke ovens and the coke is cooled in huge quenching towers and carted to the blast furnaces to
melt iron ore and the iron is refined into steel and cast into billets and loaded onto barges and
floated off into the great hungry mouth of the country.
Germany, in this passage, is personified as having a "great hungry mouth." The coal miners toil endlessly to feed this mouth, which is particularly "hungry" because the country is at war. Doerr uses the imagery of the human mouth to link Germany's increased industrial production to a form of consumption, even to physical violence. As a fascist regime, the Third Reich had no qualms about consuming everything in its path, upending livelihoods and taking lives in the process. The "mouth" of the country is hungry for industry, and it is also hungry for human sacrifice—the many bodies it must consume in pursuit of Hitler's goals.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Voice of the Reich:
In the following excerpt from Section One, the narrator meditates on the use of radio in Germany. It is a uniting force, albeit with sinister connotations, that Doerr chooses to personify:
Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the
staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its
branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for
someone who can put things right.
The radio and the Reich both have a voice, regarded by German "subjects" as akin to the voice of God. This instance of figurative language portrays the reality of propaganda dissemination under fascist rule. A "million ears" form connections to one "single mouth," and that single mouth speaks only one "truth"—that which is most convenient for and best services the purposes of Nazi leadership. Nazi radio may be akin to a god, or a prophet, in the eyes of the German people, but if the Reich is a deity, it is indeed a false one. This personified voice grows like a "imperturbable tree," branches stretching out further and further, binding Germans together but also trapping them in a web of disinformation.
Related Themes:
