What examples of personification or metaphors are in Chapter 5 of To Kill A Mockingbird?

A metaphor is a comparison of two UNLIKE objects without using the words "like" or "as".  For example: That lady is a picture of beauty.  In this sentence a lady is being compared to a picture.  These are two UNLIKE objects. 

In chapter five, Scout spends a good amount of time with Miss Maudie.  Miss Maudie tells Scout about "foot-washing Baptists", people who are strict Baptists. She tells Scout,

"Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition." (pg 45)

This compares women to sin, two UNLIKE objects.

Personification gives human qualities to inanimate objects.  An example would be: The sun smiled down on me that morning.  The sun, an object, is given a human quality, smiling.

When Miss Maudie tells Scout about Boo Radley, she says,

"No child, this is a sad house." (pg 45)

The house is given a human quality of being sad. 

The page numbers are from my book.  However, you should find the quotes somewhere close to that page.

What examples of imagery, personification, metaphor, and dialect are in chapter 11 of To Kill a Mockingbird?

Chapter 11 discusses the Mrs. Dubose saga, which brings with it many opportunities to find examples in the text for imagery, metaphors, and dialect because it is full of verbal and physical drama. First, Mrs. Dubose likes to holler rude and crude things from her porch at Jem and Scout. This creates most of the drama. "Jem was scarlet" (102) is an example of a metaphor about how he reacts to Mrs. Dubose calling his father insulting names. Jem perpetuates the drama by chopping off the tops of her camellia bushes. The description of Atticus coming home after finding out what Jem had done that day includes images that have to do with the senses of sight and sound, as follows:

"Two geological ages later, we heard the soles of Atticus's shoes scrape the front steps. The screen door slammed, there was a pause--Atticus was at the hat rack in the hall--and we heard him call, 'Jem!' His voice was like the winter wind" (103).

Scout uses the words "scrape," "slammed" and "wind" to describe the sounds associated with how a father comes home after learning upsetting news about his son's behavior that day. She also adds a cold simile--"like the winter wind"--to accentuate what the atmosphere felt like when Jem was called to his father's attention.

Dialect has to do with the way people from a specific geographical area speak. For the South in the 1930s, for example, people didn't think twice before using the N-word in any form--politely or disrespectfully. Mrs. Dubose is a great example because she has no filter with that word at all. She's also not shy to use it when referring to the children's father, Atticus. Other trends in dialect can be seen when characters talk to each other in informal settings. For example, when some people in Maycomb talk casually to each other, they drop the last letters of their words. Lee places apostrophes where sounds of letters are dropped from certain words, such as "an'" for the word "and," "goin'" for the word "going," and then some words are changed completely like "ain't" for "isn't. This also helps the reader to detect the southern accent normally associated with people from the southern states.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, can you identify examples of personification and metaphors?

An example of personification comes in chapter 1 when Scout describes Maycomb as "a tired old town," but being tired is something that humans, not towns, experience.

Also in chapter 1, women are metaphorically described as being "like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum," and Scout considers her neighbor Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose "plain hell." Charles Baker Harris, or Dill, is deemed by Scout to be "a pocket Merlin" for his imagination.

The Radley place is also described through personification: "the remains of a picket fence drunkenly guarded the front yard." And when Boo Radley was released from the courthouse basement and his father brought him home, "people said the house died." At the end of chapter 1, after Jem has touched the Radley house on a dare and run away, Jem, Scout, and Dill glance back and see that "the old house was the same, droopy and sick." Making the house seem alive and slightly malevolent or at least dangerous adds to the mystique of Boo Radley, who is known to lurk inside it.

In the second chapter, Scout's teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher, personifies, and disapproves of, Scout's creative thinking by telling her "let's not let our imaginations run away with us." At lunchtime in the classroom, "the ceiling danced" from the reflection of light off the children's metal lunch pails.

In To Kill A Mockingbird, can you identify examples of personification and metaphors?

To Kill A Mockingbird has many instances of figurative language, beginning with the title. Atticus Finch, the main character, reminds his children that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird," and the reader understands this from a metaphorical perspective because, as will be revealed in the story, prejudice and discrimination ruin relationships and lives. Mockingbirds "don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy," explains Miss Maudie to Scout, who is puzzled by her father's talk of sin in the context of mockingbirds, the real sin being that against an innocent man, Tom Robinson whom the mockingbird represents.

Boo Radley is also a victim in To Kill A Mockingbird because, after making some bad decisions, he is confined to his home for many years. His father thought that "anything that's a pleasure is a sin," and this metaphor is used to reinforce the destructiveness of  relationships based on a need to be socially accepted in a socially unjust environment. Boo Radley is assumed to be some sort of a monster based on preconceptions and rumor.

Atticus, as ever, wants his children to recognize the rights of others to their opinions and to never judge anyone until they can, "climb into his skin and walk around in it." Scout is very upset because her teacher does not appreciate her abilities and the fact that she had learned to read before starting school but Atticus wants her to understand that her teacher is new to the area and therefore, the young Scout must make allowances for her. 

"A person's conscience" is personified (attributing human qualities directly to the conscience which, in itself is only one aspect of a person) when Atticus talks of his reasons for taking Tom's case. He says:

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience"

suggesting that the conscience can make decisions independently. Atticus has to "live with myself."  This usage supports the issue of moral blindness that pervades Maycomb County.  

Atticus "one-shot Finch" surprises his children when they learn that he has a depth of character which had previously escaped them. He has not told the children about his abilities handling a gun because, as he says,

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know that you're licked before you begin (metaphor) but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

The use of personification ("courage is a man...") is a strong reminder to the reader that appearances can be deceiving and, much like the message from the "The Grey Ghost," which Atticus read to Scout, there is an overriding need to "finally see" people for what they really are. 

In To Kill A Mockingbird, can you identify examples of personification and metaphors?

Chapter 8 has several metaphors and some personification when she describes the fire at Miss Maudie's house.  One example is when the men arrive to put the fire out.  There are two examples in the following to discuss.

"At the door, we saw fire spewing from Miss Maudie's diningroom windows.  As if to confirm what we saw, the town siren wailed up the scale of a treble pitch and remained there, screaming."

The fire was "spewing," which is more like what water does.  Fire is not in liquid form, so that comparison (metaphor) is the fire and water being compared. 

The second example is personification.  The siren is screaming, which is a human characteristic.

One more example is personification of the fire again. 

"fire silently devoured Miss Maudie's house."

The fire sounds like it's eating the house (as humans would hungrily eat a meal).