Mr Dickens and Personification

'Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas'.

PERSONIFICATION is when a writer makes and object or idea take on the behaviour of humans or animals. So, we might get The weather is smiling on us today. We know that the weather doesn't smile but we know that the writer would want us to understand that the weather is good.

Similarly, we might have The smell of the dead flowers shouted. We know flowers can't shout but we would understand that the smell is so bad that it's very noticeable.

Dickens wants us to know how thin and mean and cold Scrooge sounds when he speaks. So, the cold…..speaks out shrewdly in his grating voice. It adds to our feeling of Scrooge as an all-round, thoroughly nasty person.

Download the EXERCISE: