The poem "So Much Happiness" by Naomi Shihab Nye explores the complex emotions associated with happiness and how it interacts with our daily lives. Personification is a literary device where human traits or emotions are attributed to non-human objects or concepts. In the poem, Nye writes, “Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to,” which illustrates this device vividly. This example of personification helps the reader understand that happiness is portrayed as a free and joyful force, rather than something burdensome or difficult to manage. By likening happiness to something that can ‘land’ and ‘sing,’ the poet indicates that happiness is not something that requires effort to grasp; rather, it comes and goes of its own accord. Ultimately, the use of personification throughout the poem reveals a deeper theme about the nature of happiness, suggesting that it is an inherent part of life that should be embraced freely and without the weight of responsibility.
English 9 Unit 5 and 6 Test, Open Response
Read the following poem, then write a paragraph-long response (at least SIX sentences) that:
Begins with a topic sentence that names the poem, the poet and a brief description of what the poem is about.
Defines personification in your own words.
Shares an example of personification from the poem by quoting the line exactly.
Explains HOW this example of personification helps the reader to understand what the poem is about.
Concludes with a sentence that describes how the use of personification helps to reveal the deeper meaning, or theme of the poem.
"So Much Happiness" by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records...
Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
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