Paige Rowley

Cindy Rogers
English 12
September 2, 2016
English 12 A2 Animal Farm Composition
Personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to
something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. In the
book Animal Farm, by George Orwell, there are several different examples of
personification. All the animals have human traits, emotions, and ideas. Firstly, the fact
that the animals talk at all is a human characteristic that was adopted. Another trait that
was given to the animals was the ability to think for themselves. This includes creating
laws, teaching reading and writing, holding animal meetings, rebelling, and seeking
equality. Lastly, these animals were given distinctly human emotions and traits.
Benjamin the donkey is always sullen and cynical. The horses are hardworking. The
pigs are intelligent. All of these things are different examples of personification in
Animal Farm. Personification is essential to the telling of this story because the story
itself is practically based on the idea of personification. The story is explaining the life of
farm animals from their own perspective. Since we as humans cant fully comprehend
what the life of an animal is like, whether we lack comprehension or animals lack
capacity of understanding on a human level, the whole novel leans of the idea of
personification and implementing that into the skeleton of the entire story in order for us
to understand it better. The fact that the characters are animals instead of humans makes
any understanding of it rely heavily on personification.