Personification
Figures of speechA figure that lends human traits (gestures, feelings, speech) to an animal, object or abstraction.
Example
"The wind moaned under the doors; the house held its breath."
Personification grants human properties — actions, emotions, intentions, speech — to the non-human: "the wind moaned," "the city wakes," "fear prowled the corridors." It animates the setting and turns the inert into an actor of the story.
It's one of the most direct levers for loading a description with emotion without commenting on it: a storm "pounding at the shutters" conveys a character's dread better than an adjective. Scaled up to a whole text, personification becomes prosopopoeia (when the entity speaks) or allegory (when it embodies an idea).
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