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Difficulty: MediumPersonification and Anthropomorphism

Read Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem "The Eagle" (1851):

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

In the second stanza, the personification of the sea ("The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls") primarily serves to do which of the following?

  1. A
    provide a literal description of the sea's physical waves as they move toward the shoreline
  2. B
    express the poet's personal biographical anxiety about the destructive power of marine environments
  3. stress the immense altitude of the eagle's position by reducing the vast ocean to a slow, diminutive creatureAnswer
  4. D
    identify the sea as a standard literary symbol of chaos without relating it to the poem's main subject
  5. E
    signal a shift in the speaker's tone from distant detachment to intimate sympathy for the natural world

Answer

The correct option is the one stating that the personification stresses the immense altitude of the eagle's position by reducing the vast ocean to a slow, diminutive creature.
The correct answer correctly identifies that portraying the vast ocean as 'crawling' from the eagle's high vantage point emphasizes the extreme height of the eagle's position. By reducing the massive sea to a slow-moving, tiny entity, the personification underscores the eagle's dominant, majestic overlook on the mountain walls.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the personified subject and action in the line 'The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls'.
The sea is attributed with human-like features ('wrinkled') and actions ('crawls').
Understanding what is being personified is the first step to analyzing its function.
2
Analyze the context and physical relationship between the speaker, the eagle, and the sea.
The eagle is positioned 'Close to the sun' and watches from 'mountain walls,' looking down at the sea 'beneath him'.
The spatial relationship establishes the vantage point from which the sea is observed.
3
Evaluate how the personification ('crawls') affects the reader's perception of the scale and setting.
The word 'crawls' makes the massive, powerful sea look like a small, slow, submissive organism, thereby emphasizing the supreme height and majesty of the eagle's mountain wall.
Connecting the device's effect to the poem's thematic focus on the eagle's power and perspective reveals its primary function.

Key Concept

Personification in poetry is used not just for decoration, but to establish perspective, scale, and thematic focus within a setting.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Personification and Anthropomorphism

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