What is a poem that uses both hyperbole and personification?

1 Answer
May 31, 2018

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Explanation:

Hyperbole: an extreme exaggeration to emphasise a point.
Personification: giving an object or animal human characteristics to give connotations to the object or animal.

'Storm on the island' by Seamus Heaney can be seen to use both Personification and Hyperbole. Heaney here is describing the huge power of nature upon man as it destroys houses that were built 'squat' against the storm, although they were knocked down and destroyed reflecting how nature is always more powerful over man.

Personification can be used through the semantic field of active verbs of "pummels", "explodes", "blasts", "strafes", "salvo", etc to infer the huge power of the storm as it can commit all of these terrible but yet powerful actions.

Hyperbole can be used in the ending of "a huge nothing that we fear" to infer the huge power of the storm over man as the storm is almost invisible as it is so powerful over humans. This here exaggerates the power of the storm as it does the previous verbs to the houses.