Giants Walk- Ch. 8, Personification

"He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. The meat locker was a very safe shelter....Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn" (Vonnegut 177-178).

Personification/anthropomorphism, a common literary technique, is defined as giving human characteristics or actions to a non-human. It can speak volumes in children's poetry, teaching fables with talking trees and dancing penguins. It can add interest, be used as art (think of the dogs-playing-poker painting), and describe the beautiful complexity of nature. However, in The Slaughterhouse-Five, the personification that described the fire-bombs of Dresden as footsteps of' giants" and an eating flame is a potent and dark example of the literary technique. 

Vonnegut wrote, "the giants walked and walked" (177). To the Americans in the shelter, the "high-explosive bombs" were so loud and shockingly destructive that they could only be compared to something human, but not so perfectly human: giants. Giants could be blamed for the destruction. It was just giants walking...right? It wasn't their own country dropping the incendiary bombs which would wipe out the entire surrounding community of civilians, leaving the beautiful city crushed as if it were stomped on by enormous, brutal fantasy creatures? The personification gives a vivid description of the constant sounds, shaking, and unbelievable destruction.

The second example of personification of the fire-storm says "the one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn." This also describes the scene as if a flame were just a giant monstrous human, eating everything that was alive: people, animals, trees, structures. The flame consumed and consumed more of the city, until Dresden was completely gone.