The Boys in the Boat: Personification 1 key example

This blending of the rowers with the shell—the material with the immaterial—is an instance of figurative language which gestures at the fact that rowers come together to form something bigger than the sum of their parts when they row together. As Brown explains in the prologue, "I realized that 'the boat' was something more than just the shell or its crew. To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both—it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition." From the outset of the book, "the boat" refers to something transcendent and intangible. It refers to The Husky Clipper, the collection of nine rowers that won OIympic gold, and something beyond both all at once. Recall the religion simile Pocock employs when describing boat-building: there is something spiritual to rowing crew that is hard to convey. When boats are personified throughout the book, the reader can understand that personification as an attempt to refer to this intangible element of rowing, a combination of the material and the immaterial beyond the shell and the crew rowing it.