Personification

Personification is a motif woven throughout Travers’ novel which helps develop the book’s mood through its evocation of magic. Several examples of this literary device are present in the novel, most often accompanying the presence of Mary Poppins, the book’s central and most ‘magical’ figure, creating a link between Mary Poppins and magic and imbuing the entire mood of the novel with this same spirit. The overall effect of the constant use of personification is to bring a bit of Mary Poppins’ personality into all elements of the book, even its prose descriptions.

One such example of personification is the following quote, from the chapter titled, “John and Barbara’s Story”: “All the afternoon the house was very quiet and still, as though it were thinking its own thoughts, or dreaming perhaps” (134). To portray the house as very quiet, the author employs personification to...