Les Miserables: Personification 4 key examples

After witnessing the ambush at the Jondrette lair and discovering the truth about Thenardier, Marius moves out of the Gorbeau building. The story illustrates Marius's subsequent descent into poverty with personification:

To crown all, his poverty had returned. He felt that icy breath close to him, on his heels. In the midst of his torments, and long before this, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued work; it is a habit that vanishes. A habit that is easy to get rid of, and difficult to take up again.

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In Volume 4, Book 7, the narrator discusses the origins and nature of slang, particularly how it connects the common man to the criminal world. In an effort to exhibit the downfalls of the justice system and its adverse affect on criminals, the narrator uses personification:

Alas! Will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness? […] Will she forever summon in vain to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon’s head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering, disheveled, wringing its arms, forever chained to the rock of night, a somber Andromeda white and naked amid the shadows!

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In the chaos of the revolt, fear quickly spreads through the streets of Paris. However, the narrative uses personification to prove that even catastrophe yields a step in right direction: 

He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly awakes, and, in short, we may say that it marches on, even when it is asleep, for it has increased in size. When we behold it erect once more, we find it taller. To be always peaceful does not depend on progress any more than it does on the stream; erect no barriers, cast in no boulders; obstacles make water froth and humanity boil. Hence arise troubles; but after these troubles, we recognize the fact that ground has been gained. Until order, which is nothing else than universal peace, has been established, until harmony and unity reign, progress will have revolutions as its halting-places.

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As Javert stares down into the depths of the Seine, he contemplates his existence in such a gray world. The narrator uses imagery and personification to illustrate his introspection amid the dark and foreboding waves of the river:

A sound of foam was audible; but the river could not be seen. At moments, in that dizzy depth, a gleam of light appeared, and undulated vaguely, water possessing the power of taking light, no one knows from where, and converting it into a snake. The light vanished, and all became indistinct once more. Immensity seemed thrown open there. What lay below was not water, it was a gulf. […] Nothing was to be seen, but the hostile chill of the water and the stale odor of the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from this abyss. The flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow was full of horror.

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