The Impact of Anthropomorphizing on Character Connection

Anthropomorphize: to give inanimate objects, or non-human things, human like qualities. This is the bread and butter of fantasy writing. It’s hard to create a relationship, and like or dislike a character, without them having human like qualities.

*Buying a flamingo pen, putting it in my ponytail, and calling it my emotional support pen named Fergus. Whenever life gets tough and others aren’t listening to me, I grab Fergus out of my hair and tell him all my woes.

*Placing eyes on Edison robots and giving them names. If they don’t do what you expect, you can just explain, “Look here, Twitch, the code said go straight. Stop turning!”

*But what about dogs? Are we assigning them human feelings and attributes or do they really express all the emotions we give them? Authors invent walking and talking trees. That’s a clear use of anthropomorphism. Even saying the trees are waving goodbye as the wind blows me far down the road is anthropomorphism. The trees really do sway back and forth in the wind, but that isn’t them waving goodbye. So, do we push it too far with our pets, our best furry friends?

Animals of all kinds are used in writing as the main characters. They are given human qualities and abilities to carry the story forward. The question I pose today is: do we love our furry friends because we assign to them human characteristics? Can we connect with characters in stories that are just themselves, and not anthropomorphized?