Introduction Personification simply refers to the assigning of human qualities to either tangible or intangible things that are not human. As it is with other figures of speech, literal artists, in their works and for a number of purposes, mostly use personification alongside other figures of speech. Poets and playwrights, alongside other writers, employ these solely to emphasize a certain point, clarify it or even express a more obvious occurrence in a unique and peculiar manner to attract attention and inspire deeper thinking from the readers. Personification, as used in poetry, has enabled poets to achieve a number of effects. Allen Ginsberg’s poem America is among the best examples to use when elaborating the various effects of personification in poetry. For instance, personification creates the mood in a poem as well as clarifies the moral lesson that the poet targets to put across. The effects of personification Considering the time of the composition of the poem America , that is in the 1950s when militarism and McCarthyism dominated the political scene in the United States, poetry was an important tool to enlighten the masses. Ginsberg is one of the most famous Beat Generation poets who used poetry as a form of protest to make the voices of those Americans who were against the cold war heard. He also championed the rights of the gay minorities and the liberalization of drugs openly through his poetry. Allen Ginsberg was successful in the manner he used personification in driving his point home. This is because of the several effects that personification has in this poem. These include setting the mood of the poem, making the poem more dramatic, creating a personal relationship between the readers and the poem, and making the poem believable through the consequent associations with reality. Setting the mood of the poem Allen Ginsberg effectively uses personification to set the mood of the poem. An example is “…when will you look at yourself through the grave” (Ginsberg line 10). This acts to set the overall mood of the poem in that people tend to identify more with the solemn mood associated with graves. The fear that was evident those days due to the possible implication when one presented his views that were not considered as acceptable to the American regime is also clearly portrayed through the effective use of personification. From the poem, the line “I’m sick of your insane demands”. (Ginsberg line 14) qualifies in depicting this claim. Society was such that it forced people to remain silent and refrain from shouting about their rights and expectations for the fear of the issues of disloyalty to the authorities and the most favored culture. Personification is a working criterion of setting the drama in a poem in the poet’s endeavor to drive his/her point to the majority. Making the poem more dramatic Ginsberg attracts a wide range of readers to his work by personification to enhance the action of the poem America . This is through engaging America in a lengthy monologue as if demanding for response or even waiting to observe the possible reaction. He does this through a series of rhetorical questions that engage America directly as if He was a human being (Hardesty and Michele Para 4). This makes every line of the poem have a memorable