Comparison in the Uses of Apostrophe & Personification in Shelley's

In "Ode to the West Wind", Shelley personifies many of nature's elements by attaching descriptions of remains of death that are typically human. He begins the poem with a simile by comparing the autumn leaves to ghosts. Though leaves are in fact, living things, the term "ghost" implies a spirit or presence from a living being who has passed on. To become a ghost, it is necessary to have a soul and this is specific to humans and other mammals. Shelley uses the idea of giving a soul to an inanimate object in the second stanza of his poem as well. In the fourth line, he uses angels as a metaphor for decaying leaves. Here, the reader is compelled to envision spirit beings falling from the sky with the rain and lightning. In another area of the poem whe

In the third stanza of Shelley's poem, he uses personification by assigning emotion to some of nature's elements. In the eleventh line, Shelley declares that the "sea-blooms and the oozy woods" will "suddenly grow grey with fear". The emotions he assigns are relative to the idea of death. These are the feelings that humans develop when they feel that death is near. Shelley has again, managed to give the reader an intense image of foliage shaking in their roots at the thought of the west wind's approach.

Another aspect of personification in "Mirror" that differs from Shelley's poem, is the application of human physical traits. In the fifth line, the mirror calls itself "the eye" (Charters, p.1105). Here, it is easy for the reader to accept this idea because the looking glass is comparable to that of an eye in that it reflects images. In the eighth line of Plath's poem, the mirror claims to have a heart, however, this concept is not as easy for the reader to accept. Therefore, Plath seems to ask us to identify with the sentimentality the mirror has created over the wall that occupies its reflection for most of its time.

re Shelley applies human death attributes, he states that each of the "winged seeds" is "like a corpse within its grave" (Charters, p. 871). Again, he gives us the image of a human who has died and is lying in he or she's bu!

While Shelley's poem contains elements of the personification of various inanimate items, Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror", is written entirely in this form. The speaker of the poem is the mirror itself. Plath utilizes the idea of applying more emotional characteristics to this object than did

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