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Difficulty: MediumPersonification and Anthropomorphism

Read the following lines from Thomas Hardy's poem "The Darkling Thrush" (1901):

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.

Which of the following best describes the function of the speaker's personification of the landscape and the passing century?

  1. project the speaker's internal state of desolation and mourning onto the physical worldAnswer
  2. B
    convey the poet's biographical grief over the loss of his close friends during the Victorian era
  3. C
    provide a literal description of the physical decay of the local countryside during a severe winter
  4. D
    identify the wind as a personification and the sky as a metaphor to show the speaker's mastery of poetic devices
  5. E
    establish a neutral and objective historical account of the transition between two centuries

Answer

The correct choice is the option stating that the personification projects the speaker's internal state of desolation and mourning onto the physical world.
The correct choice identifies that personifying the dying century as a corpse and the wind as its death-lament allows the speaker to project an internal mood of despair and exhaustion onto the external landscape.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the instance of personification and anthropomorphism in the text.
The speaker refers to the land's features as "The Century's corpse" and refers to the wind as "his death-lament" (using the masculine pronoun "his" to personify the century).
This establishes the literal details of the literary device being analyzed.
2
Determine the emotional and thematic effect of this personification.
Describing the landscape and the passing century as a corpse in a crypt with a death-lament creates an atmosphere of death, despair, and mourning.
This connects the literary device to the tone and speaker's perspective.
3
Evaluate the relationship between the speaker's internal state and the external environment.
The speaker projects their own internal feelings of desolation and exhaustion onto the physical setting rather than simply describing weather or stating historical facts.
This determines the primary function of the device as a projection of speaker psychology.

Key Concept

Analyzing the function of personification and anthropomorphism in establishing tone and reflecting the speaker's internal psychology.
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Topics

Personification and Anthropomorphism

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