War and Peace

Tolstoy uses personification in his depiction of the earliest actions of the Battle of Schöngraben. While Prince Andrei looks for ways to help strengthen the Russian army's position during a temporary truce with the French army, he encounters the familiar figure of Tushin, a battery officer: 

“Herb liqueur’s possible,” said Tushin, “but even so, to understand the future life…” He did not finish. Just then a whistling was heard in the air; closer, closer, faster and louder, louder and faster, and a cannonball, as if not finishing all it had to say, crashed to the ground with inhuman force not far from the lean-to, throwing up a spray of dirt. The earth seemed to gasp from the terrible blow.

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Over two years, Prince Andrei quietly institutes various reforms, recommended by Pierre, on his estate, despite his earlier cynicism. Traveling to the property in Ryazan gifted to his son, Nikolai or "Nikolushka," by his father, Prince Nikolai, Prince Andrei passes by an enormous oak tree. In the passage that follows, Tolstoy employs extensive personification: 

At the side of the road stood an oak [...] It was an enormous oak, twice the span of a man’s arms in girth, with some limbs broken off long ago, and broken bark covered with old scars. With its huge, gnarled, ungainly, unsymmetrically spread arms and fingers, it stood, old, angry, scornful, and ugly, amidst the smiling birches. It alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either the springtime or the sun. “Spring, and love, and happiness!” the oak seemed to say. 

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