Question

Read these lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself":

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he
complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
What is one purpose of the personification in this poem?
A. To make a connection between the speaker and the reader
B. To make an animal seem like a peer to the speaker
C. To link two unlike concepts: mountains and burial mounds
D. To compare the speaker to a force of nature

Answer 1

Answer: B) To make an animal seem like a peer to the speaker.

Explanation: personification is a figure of speech that consists in giving human characteristics to non human objects (or animals). In the given lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" we can see an example of personification when he says that the hawk (non human) accuses him and complains (human characteristics), this personification has the purpose of making an animal (the hawk) seem like a peer (or seem similar) to the speaker.

Answer 2

Answer : Defiant , A Rugged Individual , America Identifies With Its Wild Free Nature