How is Earth and Sky personified in Nwoye’s mother story?

Nwoye’s mother tells stories and folk tales about the natural world and their gods. In one of these stories, she often told of the quarrel between Earth and Sky long ago, and how Sky withheld rain for seven years, until crops withered and the dead could not be buried because the holes broke on the stony Earth. At last vulture was sent to plead with sky, and to soften his heart with a song of the suffering of the songs of men. Whenever Nwoye’s mother sang this song he felt carried away to the distant scene in the sky where vulture, Earth’s emissary, sang for mercy. At last Sky was moved to pity, and he gave to vulture rain wrapped in leaves of coco-yam. But as he flew home his long talon pierced the leaves and the rain fall as it had never fallen before. And so heavily did it rain on vulture that he did not return to deliver his message but flew to a distant land, from where he had espied a fire. And when he got there he found it was a man making a sacrifice. He warmed himself in the fire and ate the entrails.

In this story Earth and Sky are personified as characters with unique and oppositional desires, they quarrel over sky’s refusal to bring the rain. Meanwhile, the crops die, and the human beings suffer. In this example, personification is used to suggest that the natural world has intentionality, and that rain and shine are both determined according to the will of gods and spirits.

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